If you chose a CS degree for the easy money and don't actually enjoy programming, then no, I would say it's no longer a good choice. Yes, there were plentiful well paying, easy to get jobs cranking out code over the past twenty years but no boom lasts forever. Between both AI and a huge oversupply of coders, it will be very hard to get started in the next couple of years as a developer without above average determination and talent.
I doesn't seem so. It looks like there's a huge oversupply of software engineering and that will only make the salaries go lower.
I think something like a medical doctor or a dentist is a much safer bet. They have basically always been able to maintain high salaries for their work.
I studied economics and philosophy at a medium sized state school, yet i ended up with the software engineers because of my passion for coding. Degrees are largely just checkboxes unless you're going to MIT, Stanford, etc.
With that being said, I did use my economics degree to get my foot in the door doing data analytics then I transitioned to SWE. You'll find you way, if being a SWE is truly your passion.
My knee-jerk reaction is "No" if your goal is an easy-mode career that will give you a high salary right out of college, I think that dream is (largely) dead. If you really do love CS/related fields, I think there is plenty of room for you still, but it's no longer a free ride.
I graduated with a CS degree in 2012 so I fully benefited from the tech boom. If I were a senior in high school in 2025 knowing what I know now, I would probably go into Civil Engineering.
if you never programmed before college and you chose CS because it was a good job then you should change.
If you got into programming when you were a kid, can’t stay away from programming because you love it, and pursuing CS was an expression of this, then you should stick with it.
It used to be that there were only the second type because being a nerd wasn’t cool or lucrative. So this is just a return to baseline.
I absolutely hate the romanticism of the “good old days” when people only became programmers because of “passion”. I’ve worked professionally since 1996 and even then most people didn’t work because of “passion” they did it for money.
The people writing COBOL and FORTRAN on mainframes - I got my start writing C and FORTRAN on DEC VAX and Stratus VOS mainframes - didn’t speak about the joys of programming. They clocked in, clocked out and went on about their lives.
I doubt in 30 years across now 10 jobs I’ve met more than a handful of people that don’t have outside interests that they talk about at lunch outside of computers.
Whether he “loves” it or not is immaterial in the decision process. Whether someone will pay him so he can support his addiction to food and shelter is.
How many of the 2.7 million+ developers in the US wake up excited that they are creating Yet Another CRUD enterprise app ir some bespoke internal app that will never see the light of day outside of their company and thats the life of most developers world wide.
The business world is cyclic, and with that "programmer jobs" are also cyclic with the business cycle. So even though things look 'down' now, that does not mean that the down cycle will last forever. However, surviving through a down period as a new graduate will also not be easy in any regards.
As to AI, the current crop of AI (which is bubbling very well, and I believe is running itself quickly towards yet another AI winter [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_winter]), it may be useful for replacing some percentage of "head count" programmers, it is not likely to be replacing the actual creative, good, programmers (i.e., the one's often referred to as 10x). So the best advice I can give is to strive to really learn your craft such that you can function more towards the 10x side of the spectrum than the "head count" side. That will give you the best assurance of success at present.
It's become a lottery similar to pursuing a professional sports career. Similar to professional sports, the career duration is short. There's always kids coming up trained in the technology du jour who will work long hours for peanuts that employers will happily hire while they dump the expensive old guys.
You can do extraordinarily well as a founder if you find an opportunity, get it to market and build a moat that competitors can't surmount.
So it is definitely something a lot of people are going into and a person who doesn't want to face a bubble pop might consider something else. One good thing at Cornell is that we have a data science minor that anybody can take. I went to a talk by an English professor for instance who applies quantitative methods and data visualization to literary criticism.
Hey, you may know of my advocacy for redefining “entropy”? Check my last comment.
I think I have undone and superseded modern information theory and I want them to burn all of their false books.
I’m sure you will neg “how can everybody be wrong!”
And I say, the engineers (firsts of reality) have been driving the progress ideologues process into main stream conjecture. Bertrand Russell and Einstein (in his bio) agreed. Even the story of Shannon getting the word was a quirp about what those engineers were calling it.
So back to theory, if elegance and useful is the prevailing measure of fitness. I propose something to show how humble the true search for understanding.
"Good choice" for what? If you're not naturally curious about math, engineering, software and/or hardware, then probably not, otherwise maybe. Tech carpetbaggers out for a steady paycheck detracted from the industry more than AI ever has or will.. these people don't like mastery, learning, or excellence. Self taught but I had my doubts after transferring from CS to EE/CS, but I also took the 10 year route to minimize debt and maximize business work.
Ideally, I'd first try out or explore the intended field of work one wants to be a part of before fully committing time, money, and energy on credentials for it. This might take the form of one or more internships, reverse interviews of people in that field, and/or finding interviews about a particular person in that role or company. For anyone already enrolled, I'd still check out internships and such but only change majors if multiple internships were decidedly terrible.
Follow fun for you that others find tedious or uninteresting where there is great value requiring human-in-the-loop expertise or effort, e.g., find a defensible niche not exposed to 100% automation. That might be a STEM or financial specialty or sub-specialty that you find more interesting like biomedical informatics, data science, statistics, accounting, or actuary because becoming a generic software engineer is as risky now as becoming a generic systems administrator.
Ultimately, it's a personal decision that cannot be offloaded to others requiring some experimental research/trial and error in the real world™. Plus, it needs some luck and finding a mostly positive working environment which tend to be in short supply.
If you chose a CS degree for the easy money and don't actually enjoy programming, then no, I would say it's no longer a good choice. Yes, there were plentiful well paying, easy to get jobs cranking out code over the past twenty years but no boom lasts forever. Between both AI and a huge oversupply of coders, it will be very hard to get started in the next couple of years as a developer without above average determination and talent.
I doesn't seem so. It looks like there's a huge oversupply of software engineering and that will only make the salaries go lower.
I think something like a medical doctor or a dentist is a much safer bet. They have basically always been able to maintain high salaries for their work.
If I were looking at the landscape entering the market today instead of 30 years ago when I entered it, I would look into health care.
I studied economics and philosophy at a medium sized state school, yet i ended up with the software engineers because of my passion for coding. Degrees are largely just checkboxes unless you're going to MIT, Stanford, etc.
With that being said, I did use my economics degree to get my foot in the door doing data analytics then I transitioned to SWE. You'll find you way, if being a SWE is truly your passion.
My knee-jerk reaction is "No" if your goal is an easy-mode career that will give you a high salary right out of college, I think that dream is (largely) dead. If you really do love CS/related fields, I think there is plenty of room for you still, but it's no longer a free ride.
I graduated with a CS degree in 2012 so I fully benefited from the tech boom. If I were a senior in high school in 2025 knowing what I know now, I would probably go into Civil Engineering.
if you never programmed before college and you chose CS because it was a good job then you should change.
If you got into programming when you were a kid, can’t stay away from programming because you love it, and pursuing CS was an expression of this, then you should stick with it.
It used to be that there were only the second type because being a nerd wasn’t cool or lucrative. So this is just a return to baseline.
I absolutely hate the romanticism of the “good old days” when people only became programmers because of “passion”. I’ve worked professionally since 1996 and even then most people didn’t work because of “passion” they did it for money.
The people writing COBOL and FORTRAN on mainframes - I got my start writing C and FORTRAN on DEC VAX and Stratus VOS mainframes - didn’t speak about the joys of programming. They clocked in, clocked out and went on about their lives.
I doubt in 30 years across now 10 jobs I’ve met more than a handful of people that don’t have outside interests that they talk about at lunch outside of computers.
Whether he “loves” it or not is immaterial in the decision process. Whether someone will pay him so he can support his addiction to food and shelter is.
How many of the 2.7 million+ developers in the US wake up excited that they are creating Yet Another CRUD enterprise app ir some bespoke internal app that will never see the light of day outside of their company and thats the life of most developers world wide.
The business world is cyclic, and with that "programmer jobs" are also cyclic with the business cycle. So even though things look 'down' now, that does not mean that the down cycle will last forever. However, surviving through a down period as a new graduate will also not be easy in any regards.
As to AI, the current crop of AI (which is bubbling very well, and I believe is running itself quickly towards yet another AI winter [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_winter]), it may be useful for replacing some percentage of "head count" programmers, it is not likely to be replacing the actual creative, good, programmers (i.e., the one's often referred to as 10x). So the best advice I can give is to strive to really learn your craft such that you can function more towards the 10x side of the spectrum than the "head count" side. That will give you the best assurance of success at present.
It's become a lottery similar to pursuing a professional sports career. Similar to professional sports, the career duration is short. There's always kids coming up trained in the technology du jour who will work long hours for peanuts that employers will happily hire while they dump the expensive old guys.
You can do extraordinarily well as a founder if you find an opportunity, get it to market and build a moat that competitors can't surmount.
No. Health related fields or something like that would be more sensible.
Well CS is basically majoring in AI… so I would say yea.
I am looking out my window at a new Computing and Information Science building
https://mastodon.social/@UP8/115500560220694978
and they merged the Computer Science, Information Science and Data Science programs into one big department that enrolls 2000+ students
https://milestones.cis.cornell.edu/
So it is definitely something a lot of people are going into and a person who doesn't want to face a bubble pop might consider something else. One good thing at Cornell is that we have a data science minor that anybody can take. I went to a talk by an English professor for instance who applies quantitative methods and data visualization to literary criticism.
Hey, you may know of my advocacy for redefining “entropy”? Check my last comment.
I think I have undone and superseded modern information theory and I want them to burn all of their false books.
I’m sure you will neg “how can everybody be wrong!”
And I say, the engineers (firsts of reality) have been driving the progress ideologues process into main stream conjecture. Bertrand Russell and Einstein (in his bio) agreed. Even the story of Shannon getting the word was a quirp about what those engineers were calling it.
So back to theory, if elegance and useful is the prevailing measure of fitness. I propose something to show how humble the true search for understanding.
"Good choice" for what? If you're not naturally curious about math, engineering, software and/or hardware, then probably not, otherwise maybe. Tech carpetbaggers out for a steady paycheck detracted from the industry more than AI ever has or will.. these people don't like mastery, learning, or excellence. Self taught but I had my doubts after transferring from CS to EE/CS, but I also took the 10 year route to minimize debt and maximize business work.
Ideally, I'd first try out or explore the intended field of work one wants to be a part of before fully committing time, money, and energy on credentials for it. This might take the form of one or more internships, reverse interviews of people in that field, and/or finding interviews about a particular person in that role or company. For anyone already enrolled, I'd still check out internships and such but only change majors if multiple internships were decidedly terrible.
Follow fun for you that others find tedious or uninteresting where there is great value requiring human-in-the-loop expertise or effort, e.g., find a defensible niche not exposed to 100% automation. That might be a STEM or financial specialty or sub-specialty that you find more interesting like biomedical informatics, data science, statistics, accounting, or actuary because becoming a generic software engineer is as risky now as becoming a generic systems administrator.
Ultimately, it's a personal decision that cannot be offloaded to others requiring some experimental research/trial and error in the real world™. Plus, it needs some luck and finding a mostly positive working environment which tend to be in short supply.
Good luck.
It's a good choice if it is what you want to do.
A bad choice if it is something you don't want to do.
And a reasonable choice if neither of those apply.
Good luck.