[Rob Banks]

I am 25 and recently decided to go back to school. I decided to major in computer science after taking part of a free "intro to computer science" course online from the MIT Open Courseware website and finding it very interesting.

Is computer science the right career choice for somebody who is good at things like math, logic, and all the technical stuff, but not so good at things like social networking, career advancement through making the right contacts, playing office politics, etc.?

[PolymathGuru]

(09-21-2017 01:41 PM)Rob Banks Wrote:  

Is computer science the right career choice for somebody who is good at things like math, logic, and all the technical stuff

Yes.

(09-21-2017 01:41 PM)Rob Banks Wrote:  

but not so good at things like social networking, career advancement through making the right contacts, playing office politics, etc.?

That is part of every job. Just looking up info on quora can give you an idea why some programmers struggle to find jobs(well paid and highly specialized field). Learning to play office politics and network will always lead you to new opportunities that can be hard to tap if you are dealing with a stranger. Having competent communication skills with none technical people is very useful. To translate technical ideas to a non technical audience is quite rare.

If you are going back to school, consider minoring in English. Specifically for writing and grammar. English majors on their own are really useless, but really powerful when compounded with another skill. Keep in mind technical writers and translators easily make 80k a year doing something most people cannot do.

[John Michael Kane]

Computer science is a great career to be in right now. If you get into something like robotics or A.I. it is a sure path to a six-figure income if you work hard, as it is a growth industry. The social bit is just a part of any job like Polymath was saying above. The important part is to work for a manager that you respect. Try to work in a division that has as many men as possible and as few of women as possible. A team of dedicated geeky dudes can accomplish a lot. I have lots of engineering and science friends in my social circle, even if I'm not a tech geek and more of social networker as you say. If you set goals for yourself and work with a manager that explains that they promote on merit, you'll be just fine. Social networking can be learned, but the best thing you can do is have technical competence so your work speaks for itself. You're on the right path, just work for the right boss!

[Genghis Khan]

Quote:

Is computer science the right career choice for somebody who is good at things like math, logic, and all the technical stuff, but not so good at things like social networking, career advancement through making the right contacts, playing office politics, etc.?

You sound very similar to most programmers I know. The social/networking are aspects you can pick up. This really may be the absolute best place online to learn all that.

Math and logic are surprisingly in short supply and very high demand.

Computer science is from a purely career point of view the best major you can choose right now: every CS department is growing rapidly, and they still can't keep up with demand. And I don't think it's a bubble - probably going to see demand >to supply for a while.

From experience the past 5 years, it's the most in demand field out there. I have younger friends getting 3-4 offers easily. It's almost absurd how easily a lot of them get jobs, assuming they're good at programming, American citizens and have a bit of social skills.

Good luck dude!

[sonoran_]

Im not sure if this is purely computer science but any experts please weigh in. I found this post somewhere else. How accurate is this? and can someone clarify some of the steps as this is a little messy?


learn a facet of Big (or Fast Data or Big Data 2.0 i.e. Data Analytics/IoT (Internet of Things [To Be At One Time or Another]).Big Data has such a colossal shortage that it's not even funny yet it pays out the wahzoo.

Start off with an online university,then get an internship or get an entry-level job doing Hadoop (on-premise data ingestion & wrangling) and AWS or Azure HD Insight (off-premise cloud PaaS ran by Amazon, the latter by Microsoft). The Big Data industry is segueing itself from batch data processing to streaming via Tez/Hive, Kafka concurrent threading ingestor (runs 1M% times faster than RabbitMQ at 4M MESSAGES PER FCKING SECOND & Spark (both Apache foundation registered) for lightening fast data ingestion, mapping, and wrangling. That speed is needed because we are transcending upon petabytes and exabytes of data nowadays. Within a decade, zetabytes will be common in the IoT/Fast Data world.

oh and if and when one gets into Big Data, please please learn Java because it's a complete object-oriented language (it increases productivity, execution times, and avoids redundancy of its objects/data structures, etc.) and learn at least one interpretation language such as HiveQL or Python (more the latter really) and then do the rest of what I told you to do.

[The Beast1]

Learning to network and be social is stupid easy. It's confidence in yourself with a mix of story telling which is what others buy into.

First, drop the I can't attitude.
Next, head to a toastmasters club and get comfortable public speaking or take a public speaking class in college.
Lastly, learn how to tell compelling stories.

This will build your confidence.

[Heart Break Kid]

(09-22-2017 12:39 PM)sonoran_ Wrote:  

Im not sure if this is purely computer science but any experts please weigh in. I found this post somewhere else. How accurate is this? and can someone clarify some of the steps as this is a little messy?


learn a facet of Big (or Fast Data or Big Data 2.0 i.e. Data Analytics/IoT (Internet of Things [To Be At One Time or Another]).Big Data has such a colossal shortage that it's not even funny yet it pays out the wahzoo.

Start off with an online university,then get an internship or get an entry-level job doing Hadoop (on-premise data ingestion & wrangling) and AWS or Azure HD Insight (off-premise cloud PaaS ran by Amazon, the latter by Microsoft). The Big Data industry is segueing itself from batch data processing to streaming via Tez/Hive, Kafka concurrent threading ingestor (runs 1M% times faster than RabbitMQ at 4M MESSAGES PER FCKING SECOND & Spark (both Apache foundation registered) for lightening fast data ingestion, mapping, and wrangling. That speed is needed because we are transcending upon petabytes and exabytes of data nowadays. Within a decade, zetabytes will be common in the IoT/Fast Data world.

oh and if and when one gets into Big Data, please please learn Java because it's a complete object-oriented language (it increases productivity, execution times, and avoids redundancy of its objects/data structures, etc.) and learn at least one interpretation language such as HiveQL or Python (more the latter really) and then do the rest of what I told you to do.

Not sure about this part, plus it doesn't state what you should study? CS?

[sonoran_]

actually later on it was recommended to go to Edureka.co and take a big data course.

Ive been really considering taking the big data or data science "masters" program on this website https://www.edureka.co/search/category/B...+Analytics

but with a 1200+$ investment I have to think hard about it.

The million $ question is, Can a person take that course and use it to get an entry level position ?

[Kona]

My sister just got a computer science degree from a fancy computer sciencey school. The interviews she's done have all yielded some pretty impressive offers. And when its computers, you don't interview face-to-face anymore. This is Skype and face time. And she's dumb as rocks and a mega bitch.

Aloha!

[ProGambler]

Does a bear shit in the woods?

[TheCroatian]

Which aspects of computer science are you most interested in?

If you're looking at this from the perspective of making apps (even AR/VR), working in a design agency or working abroad as a "digital nomad" you actually might not want to invest the energy required to complete a computer science degree, which can be very difficult.

I finished a BA in Economics with a minor in Psychology and ended up working as a Java Developer just by building apps in my spare time. I landed my first job at $50k/yr (in a smaller city, ~500k people) and have since doubled it in 4 years. I built an online portfolio, and published some of my apps and scripts under the MIT Open Source License so that prospective employers could see how I code.

My degree also required lots of technical writing (I write lots of documentation at my job), knowledge of operations management and verbal communication skills which tends to be a major advantage in a field full of introverts.

All that being said, it's not like I'll be pulling $200k+ on salary unless I get into management. It's the computer science grads/engineers that get to do the fun stuff in terms of machine learning, building the advanced libraries that most of us developers simply plug into our apps, etc. After 4 years on the job market I still do feel that I'm labeled more like a "technician" than an "engineer", which is true but can be frustrating sometimes. Colleagues have used that against me, but this seems to come from guys who knew they over-invested in their degrees and failed compared to their expectations.

Tech salaries, as in law, tend to be a bimodal distribution, with the top salaries at the most prestigious companies being extremely high, and the vast majority paying very average wages. The problem is that comp sci degrees can be expensive, so the guys that don't do exceptionally tend to harbor some resentment for the guys that managed to get into the industry in other ways (and that is sometimes a cause for some rather immature intraoffice competition, unfortunately)—unless they went into computer science because they're intrinsically passionate about computers and computation.

It really depends how deep you want to get with this field.

[Pete]

I have a degree in Business, CompManagement Info Systems.

Could anyone give me some guidance as to what certs should I take to get an entry level job? I never used my degree (or liked it, I just got it because of family pressure), but now in the city I live I see I could easily make $80k, but have no idea how to get into it.

[S3K2]

I have a computer science degree and didnt do shit for me, legally. Than agian, I already had a decent job for my local gov't while I attained my degree so did not pursue it admittedly. Illeagally, computer science is my main income...

[Mage]

I think it is a good career, but it is not a very good lifestyle - you spend a lot of time sedentary before a computer and your social skills are not engaged to maximum. Ultimately success comes from social skills, charisma and health - keeping these things up on the level is certainly possible while working as a coder, but it is an uphill battle. Even in computer science the guys doing sales and presentation or management probably earn more then talented coders, so there is always that risk to focus too much on technical stuff and fall behind in the social/money game.

[kongzi]

(09-22-2017 10:35 AM)Genghis Khan Wrote:  

Math and logic are surprisingly in short supply and very high demand.. it's the most in demand field out there. I have younger friends getting 3-4 offers easily. It's almost absurd how easily a lot of them get jobs

I think you mean if they have experience, then it's very easy to get new offers. For entry level candidates, it's not so easy to 3-4 offers. From my experience, there is a ton of competition in certain fields like big data and data science.

I spent over a year applying for jobs and got no offers despite having a graduate degree in STEM and my own portfolio. And no, I don't think it's due to a lack of social skills because I managed to get offers when applying to non-CS related jobs. I've known others who also struggled for over a year applying for CS-related jobs

[Genghis Khan]

(11-07-2017 02:25 AM)kongzi Wrote:  

(09-22-2017 10:35 AM)Genghis Khan Wrote:  

Math and logic are surprisingly in short supply and very high demand.. it's the most in demand field out there. I have younger friends getting 3-4 offers easily. It's almost absurd how easily a lot of them get jobs

I think you mean if they have experience, then it's very easy to get new offers. For entry level candidates, it's not so easy to 3-4 offers. From my experience, there is a ton of competition in certain fields like big data and data science.

I spent over a year applying for jobs and got no offers despite having a graduate degree in STEM and my own portfolio. And no, I don't think it's due to a lack of social skills because I managed to get offers when applying to non-CS related jobs. I've known others who also struggled for over a year applying for CS-related jobs

What country and what tier of colleges were you applying from?

The friends I'm talking about are college kids in the US from top-tier schools. I have one kid from a top 30 school (if even that) who is a F-1 student and has a software internship lined up with a Fortune 500 company without much ado.

[kongzi]

I'm in the US. Graduated from a top public school. My degree was science-related, but I self-taught myself CS skills to apply for CS jobs like in data science. I finally did manage to get a CS-related job eventually though, so I can't complain too much

[flanders]

(11-07-2017 02:25 AM)kongzi Wrote:  

(09-22-2017 10:35 AM)Genghis Khan Wrote:  

Math and logic are surprisingly in short supply and very high demand.. it's the most in demand field out there. I have younger friends getting 3-4 offers easily. It's almost absurd how easily a lot of them get jobs

I think you mean if they have experience, then it's very easy to get new offers. For entry level candidates, it's not so easy to 3-4 offers. From my experience, there is a ton of competition in certain fields like big data and data science.

I spent over a year applying for jobs and got no offers despite having a graduate degree in STEM and my own portfolio. And no, I don't think it's due to a lack of social skills because I managed to get offers when applying to non-CS related jobs. I've known others who also struggled for over a year applying for CS-related jobs

I agree with kongzi. Maths and logic aren't in "short supply" and never were. It's a cheap hobby. Look at the search results for "unemployed/underemployed math grad" or "physics grad" sometime. Not to mention the only industry actively seeking mathematicians is the NSA and even they have a stick up their asses with who they let in.

No, in short supply are HR departments and "hiring managers" who don't have their heads far up their own asses. In short supply are companies willing to make even a fraction of investment in employees.

I can't honestly say even a third of the guys giving me an interview for anything would ever be able to do any of the technical head-scratching shit I've done (or they require) and yet they're privileged to sit there assessing and judging my accomplishments like their opinion matters. They have bizarre, unrealistic, often contradictory expectations and no room for compromise, because they know so little on what they actually need that what's important is lost in trivial details ... like a middle aged woman on a dating website.

They pen a list of requirements for candidates, you hit five of the six bullet points, and in the interest of not wasting even one company dollar on a temporarily unproductive candidate they tell you to fuck off. God forbid they take flak for actually doing their jobs. In the meantime they've wasted three business quarters looking for their unicorn and the company is losing money from lack of any kind of productivity, the difference of which could have gone to an underpaid entry level candidate who would more than be fully trained and qualified for the job after three months .. and would probably exceed expectations and graduate to an intermediate role after a year.

[Genghis Khan]

(06-25-2018 03:44 PM)kongzi Wrote:  

I'm in the US. Graduated from a top public school. My degree was science-related, but I self-taught myself CS skills to apply for CS jobs like in data science. I finally did manage to get a CS-related job eventually though, so I can't complain too much

What does science-related mean? Graduate degree in STEM?

And yeah, if you don't have a degree in CS or an extremely related field (electrical or computer engineering), it's going to be harder to get a job because you have to convince HR you have the equivalent knowledge and know-how of someone who has gone through a CS program. Having a grad degree in math, or physics for example doesn't change that.

[FullThrottleTX]

delete

[churros]

What kind of meaningless world are we living in, where the only feasible job is to code bullshit apps for teenage girls.

Not meant as a dig at cs guys, but the state of the industry in general.

[godzilla]

^I think the sector is attractiveness of the sector is that you don't need a college degree to starting working in the industry. Though id caution people who want to do this. Its not easy to find a work at the beginning.

[kuqezi]

(06-25-2018 11:31 PM)churros Wrote:  

What kind of meaningless world are we living in, where the only feasible job is to code bullshit apps for teenage girls.

Not meant as a dig at cs guys, but the state of the industry in general.

Respectfully disagree.
You probably have very limited knowledge of what Computer Science or Engineering is.
You're just talking about one branch of the software engineering side of it, meaning the coding of apps.
There's so much more out there like:

Backend systems (The OS, the kernel)
Data (NoSQL, Object Oriented DBs, BigData, etc...)
Business Intelligence (things like Oracle CRMs, Tableu, etc)
Networking (neural networks, etc...)
AI
Robotics
Research...

and I barely made a scratch into the vast world of Engineering. Be a bit more open minded or research some more.
Cheers!

[Lampwick]

(06-26-2018 09:32 AM)kuqezi Wrote:  

(06-25-2018 11:31 PM)churros Wrote:  

What kind of meaningless world are we living in, where the only feasible job is to code bullshit apps for teenage girls.

Not meant as a dig at cs guys, but the state of the industry in general.

Respectfully disagree.
You probably have very limited knowledge of what Computer Science or Engineering is.
You're just talking about one branch of the software engineering side of it, meaning the coding of apps.
There's so much more out there like:

Backend systems (The OS, the kernel)
Data (NoSQL, Object Oriented DBs, BigData, etc...)
Business Intelligence (things like Oracle CRMs, Tableu, etc)
Networking (neural networks, etc...)
AI
Robotics
Research...

and I barely made a scratch into the vast world of Engineering. Be a bit more open minded or research some more.
Cheers!

It's telling that you mainly focus on job function and don't address the larger point that the "missions" of many of today's companies are dubious. The big money right now is in FAANG:

Facebook (smartphone dopamine hits)
Apple (smartphone dopamine hits)
Amazon (putting Mom and Pop out of business, monopolizing the world)
Netflix (mindless entertainment)
Google (toll bridge rent seeking)

All of these companies have backend, data, BI, etc., but that doesn't speak to their purpose.

I work on the business side, but I had an engineer friend that wanted me to join him at one of the "chum box" advertising companies (warning, disgusting images, but very good article: https://www.theawl.com/2015/06/a-complet...rnet-chum/).

From his perspective, he gets to work on really cool high-traffic, large scale systems all day long, and he gets paid very well. Meanwhile, they are polluting the Internet with the worst garbage imaginable.

Many times, engineers have the luxury of being divorced from the ugly realities of what actually generates their paycheck.

Of course I'm being overly reductive and pessimistic, but it's a fair point that working for many of the most successful technology companies is not as inspiring as working for, I dunno, U.S. Steel.

[RexImperator]

I’ve read that it’s now the most common major among CEOs.