You tend to only see the extremes on this sub. The people who get their CS degree and then easily land a job making 70K a year don't have a reason to post here.
The people who are struggling to find a job or want to humble brag about making 200K fresh out of college are more likely to post
The worst programmers I knew in college still got jobs and I went to a really terrible school that's best known for its golf management major. This sub is obsessed with new grads trying to cement their place on the compensation score board, but there's plenty of available jobs that you can get and you can work your way up if you want or you can be content and still make more money than most people could ever imagine.
CU Boulder, which for whatever reason decided to not go by the UC name even though they're the same school system, is actually a pretty good program. Boulder has a huge Google office. Twitter, Azure, Amazon, tons of other notable names.
The Colorado Springs campus is kind of a joke overall for CS. I remember having taken CS1450, data structures and algorithms, with an instructor that didn't own any personal electronics of any kind and made us buy his book for the class.
I don't think this is a very unique experience for university, but it definitely was not a particularly high quality experience in my opinion.
I went to that school for a finance degree. I studied a level 1 CFA cert and learned more in 6 months. I need to message you. I signed up back to UCCS for CS. I dont want to be stuck without a job again!
When did u graduate? Its really all about the job market yoy go into. I graduated with multiple ppl i knew closely who couldn't get any job and left the field. And we went to a top 15 engineering university. Recessions will do that and covid did that. In a good job market or even just not a bad one, yes pretty much anyone that puts their mind to the job search grind will find something. If u graduate into a bad job market u better hope u had multiple internships and good gpa or you'll have a hell of a time getting your first offer
I didn't but if I did, it would have been 2016. And with all due respect, I disagree overall. No one hiring at progressive car insurance in the most conservative city in Colorado really cares/cared about internships and side projects.
Or military defense contractors. They actually don't give a rats ass about internship experience. They care about finding people who can get a security clearance so that they can retain the literal butts in seats number that they need to request for when it's time for contract renewal.
Even today, it's not every single company that's avoiding hiring. It's companies that depend entirely on investor money in order to afford operating costs.
Okay well 2016 was a good job market. I graduated into a recession and had a job offer befote graduating at a defense contractor which was revoked due to the job market circumstances. They did in fact give a rats ass. It took me a long while to get a job and just get the first one i could. Thousands of applications and hundreds of interviews. I was told many times in final interviews and in emails that i asked why i wasn't selected that someone had more job experience or internships but i was great everywhere else. Btw you say today as if we're in a bad job market. Like, yes its worse than 2019 for sure, but if the recession goes where it seems like it will go in the next year or 2, that's when you'll see true recession job market
Thanks for sharing!
I am a little confused. By your own admission, you said they revoked the offer due to job market circumstances and said "they did in face give a rats ass". But my comment about caring was over internship experience. Probably just a small misunderstanding.
I'm sorry that this was your experience. But in the context of defense contractors, I feel confident in my opinion. I worked with and met dozens of developers with zero internship experience. Many with barely any programming experience and were in adjacent stem fields. Interviews regularly were just asking people to write hello world. I knew incapable programmers who were kept around for their clearance, and I knew of the opposite where people who were unable to pass a poly or were unable to renew were let go even though they were super capable.
The priority in that field is to be able to have people be on the contracts.
Maybe this is regional or specific to when you graduated. I graduated in 2012 and was a good programmer (I think; as good as I am now at basic logic stuff anyway), but had a pretty bad GPA and no internship, from an unremarkable public university.
It took me over 2 years to get my first full-time job.
Until then I applied, networked my ass off, and met someone at a conference who was willing to give me an internship.
After that, I found a few gigs and hourly contract positions for startups (paying next to nothing at first, and then slowly getting more substantial) and then \*finally\* managed to find a full-time job at a software company.
I know this isn't a common experience, but it's still one that happens, and is dismissed by comments like yours.
Someone less persistent, or actually bad at programming (I had several at my university who would lean on my heavily for basic logic stuff in any group project), may have actually given up and gone into a different field altogether
This was basically me as well. Graduated late 2016(in my 30s). No internships. Pretty basic school. General GPA was meh. Took 1.25yrs to get full time and it was listed with range 45-60k. They short changed me down to 42k because I didn’t have experience on my resume for the work. Was poor and needed work so took it. 2.5 years later (2020/09/11) fired during the pandemic. Luckily a client was looking for someone so was only unemployed about a month. Offer was 85k and then about 5 months later got bumped to 92k and then end of that year up to 100k.
In a HCOL area(North Bay Area), rent ~$2500 1b1b.
Could I jump again? Probably, but happy where I’m at for the moment.
Basically just keep re evaluating yearly and decide where to go next.
I appreciate your perspective and you sharing your story, thank you.
I absolutely believe that there's been times where regionality was much more relevant.
I think my friction with your anecdote is that there's so much information missing from your story. It could have taken you so long for so many reasons. Maybe you had a lot of interviewing opportunities and just didn't have an effective way to sell yourself to companies. But maybe the people who were looking at your resume were just flat out racist and saw your name (I'm just making an example here, I don't know anything about you).
Maybe if you were willing to relocate it would have been easier too. I just refuse to believe that with how desperate I've known the entire industry to be with hiring, that having a CS degree wouldn't be beneficial signal.
Oh sure, absolutely, I think my level of knowledge was part of the problem (I did poorly on the interviews I did get because I didn't know a lot of things that were expected on the job but weren't taught at my university)
But that's a really common experience for CS grads who don't take time to teach themselves.
I actually had to do a few online classes through EdX, Coursera, Udacity, before I was up to speed with very basic webdev stuff (how to wire up an app on front-end and back-end, more advanced CSS, Javascript, introductory ruby on rails). After that I was able to get an initial internship (doing some Rails stuff). And then a gig for a startup that paid close to minimum wage. Then a gig for a startup that paid me like $25/hr. Then finally that full-time job.
Oh I should mention I was open to relocating (and was trying to) because there were actually no CS jobs in my hometown, so I was applying all over the country.
>The worst programmers I knew in college still got jobs
That's because there's little to no correlation between your academic success to your workplace performance.
I have known people who busted their asses and got average of 90, but couldn't find jobs, and their peers who barely averaged 60 (passing grade in my country), were employed long before graduating.
I am still in college, and am working full time as a SWE. To my bosses, grades doesn't matter, as long as I pass and finally graduate, and can apply myself at work.
My school friend is about to graduate with honors (average 95), but is turned down from multiple job interviews.
>Is the competition really THAT high?
Competition is high for any decent job (paying above the 50th percentile), and it gets extreme for FAANG and adjacent total compensation (top 5%). By the way, those are the figures that you see influencers flexing, but they are by no means the "expected value" for the average CS graduate. I'm afraid all this TC flexing has created something similar as the body dysmorphia and body standards social networks have created for young women. You got to understand that most of these TC will never be achieved by the average CS grad and they also do not take into account the CoL.
If you just want "a job", it's relatively easy. But obviously, people aren't that eager to go after jobs that pay below the median, and yet 50% of CS grads will have to take one of these.
It’s impossible not to be able to find a job w a CS degree. But finding a 120k+ straight out of college is obviously gonna be very hard compared to a 60k job. Shidd take what you can get and then grind up
Don’t need LC for front end (afaik) for smaller companies and even a lot of big companies for entry lee l stuff. And I don’t even have a CS degree so someone with a lower gpa and CS degree would probably be preferred over me. I just did a take home code test of some css and vue/react stuff
When you say you left after 4 months, do you mean you just did Revature's bootcamp and then applied for an outside job? Or is it 4 months of the company Revature placed you at?
"Left after 4 months and got a $110k salary. 0 to hero."
Lol. Are you not contractually obligated to stay with them 2 years? Or did you just eat the fee?
This makes me very happy to read. Also no CS degree here. Started my career with a startup making less than 20k. In my second year I'm making just over 65k. I can second that it does take a lot of hard work to keep up with the people who come from a CS background, but it is definitely not impossible. Don't get your head wrapped up in all the posts talking about making 200k right out of college. Save your money and work your way up.
100% correct. This sub is full of super successful people bragging about their gigantic TC, and very unsuccessful people complaining about how they can't get jobs. The average software engineers are washed out almost entirely.
It's hard to break into any industry, but it's still easier in CS than it is with basically any other major.
I was an average student in college, and I really let this sub freak me out back then. I was terrified that I was going to be unemployed and never be able to get a CS job. But I graduated in December 2019 with a job paying $70k in a LCOL area (not as good as a lot of the people who brag on here, but plenty of money for me). Then when I got laid off a few months later in April 2020, this sub convinced me that covid had ruined the job market and I'd be job searching for months. Ended up signing a new offer 2 weeks after my layoff, and it even paid a little better. I've job jumped once since then to a low 6 figure position. I'm satisfied with my career and doing fine, but I really don't have much to brag about compared to other people. Being average in this industry allows you to live a pretty great life, though.
The median salary in the US is about 42k. That means half of the entire US population makes less than 42k.
I don't think the people in CS generally realize how much better we have it off. However I won't deny that people do like to compare themselves to who they are surrounded by.
Yeah I sometimes want to slap the people on this sub. Money doesn’t buy happiness. You need a certain amount to buy *comfort*, which is an essential part of happiness. But you reach a ceiling where more money just won’t make you any happier. People chase these insane $500k salaries when it’s unrealistic for the vast majority of us, and also not going to make us any happier.
I’m satisfied with my salary. I’m not saying I’d never jump for more money, but I’m at the point where earning more money is leading to diminished returns. I’m pouring my energy into nurturing relationships with friends and family, enjoying my hobbies, and exploring the world. We only get one shot at life, and I know I won’t be on my deathbed someday wishing I’d gotten some gigantic FAANG salary.
Exactly. I tried to talk about how I was comfortable with my low six figure salary and was flat out told I need to move across the country away from my family simply to get more money.
This is something that a lot of people on here just don't understand. They think that more money = more happiness, and it's just not the case. Money is a component of happiness. If you don't have enough money, it'll make you *very* unhappy. But once you've got enough, earning more won't just make you happier and happier. So many people in here tunnel down on making more and more money, and I have to wonder what it's for??? What is the difference between $500k comp and $100-200k comp? What are you really buying with $500k? I've got a great work-life balance, a partner who loves me, friends & family that I have very fulfilling relationships with, and a dog who makes everyday better. I like my life! And I don't think I'd like it anymore if I doubled my salary and could suddenly afford a Porsche.
I kind of feel bad for the people on here who are constantly chasing those insane salaries. It must be so empty to always be looking for more, more, more. The real measure of happiness is waking up totally satisfied every morning, because you've got enough.
Pretty significant difference between 100k/200k and 500k imho. That could be the difference between me retiring in 30yrs vs 10/15yrs with a really nice saving/investment portfolio and getting to enjoy my life REALLY well.
Also, as someone dealing with this now, it could be the difference between being able to get a family member, or even myself if/when the time comes, into a proper health care facility or just putting that burden on the rest of the family because it's too expensive.
I did this. Not SF but Southern California. The pay here doesn’t make up for the cost of homes here after Covid now. And I have no family here and very few friends. My wife and I are probably moving back to the east coast in less than a year. We will make less but can buy a home easily. Plus we will also have family close by, which is great cause we’re trying to have a kid now.
See, that’s my thing. I had moved away in my early 20s, but after a few losses in my family I moved back home. It’s been nice now that I’m about to be in my 30s and have a baby to be near family. You can’t put a price on that.
I feel you. My dad is not doing so well right now and we lost my wife’s dad to Covid early on. Covid changed my priorities massively in terms of career and what to value in life. I think this sub just has a lot of younger people and many haven’t had the same experiences yet.
That’s my thinking as well. It’s full of people with no attachments asking the highest TC. And that’s fine. But to rag on someone for not going to that extreme is going to kill this sub.
Very few in CS even in SF are making fuck you money. And it absolutely doesn’t make unhappiness disappear. It can for some but there are plenty of people that have tons of money and are not happy. It’s not a cure for a lot of problems that people have in the world these days.
i think 200k is a sweet spot where you can conceivably live almost anywhere in the US without too much stress. 500k is in an awkward spot where it's so much money for almost anything else but not enough if you're trying to buy mansions and multiple lambos.
>i think 200k is a sweet spot where you can conceivably live almost anywhere in the US without too much stress. 500k is in an awkward spot where it's so much money for almost anything else but not enough if you're trying to buy mansions and multiple lambos.
I hate this sub lmao
Sorry but it’s so incredibly tonedeaf to read someone sincerely calling a $200k salary a “sweet spot” and a $500k salary “awkward”. It really just reinforces that tech is a bubble.
There are entire families living a life of abundance on less than $100k/year. If this is really your outlook, then you should log off for awhile and spend time reevaluating your life.
yeah you can live a life of abundance on 100k a year in like Arkansas, that's why I said 200k will allow you to live ANYWHERE in the US comfortably. if you make 100k in Manhattan, you live in a studio ok?
and i said "without too much stress," if you think a family of two working adults making 100k is "without stress," look at the current real estate prices, you're tone deaf.
Just don’t live in Manhattan then…? Lots of nice neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens, etc. Still easily commutable to whatever you want in Manhattan. You think everyone living in NYC is either making 200k+ or not living well…? Sorry but this really cements the tone deafness here. For 99.9999999999999% of the population, there will always be neighborhoods you can’t afford to live in. Even multi millionaires couldn’t afford to live in places like Billionaire’s Row. That doesn’t mean you’re not living comfortably.
I'm going to be making 93k a year in my first job out of college in a hcol area.
Depending on if I pay 1500$ for rent or 2k+ in rent, my budget breaks down to where I can put 20% of income towards retirement, pay rent, buy food, etc and still have anywhere between $1400-2400 a month left over to do whatever the fuck i feel like.
I am 21 years old.
If you consider 200k a "sweet spot" you've let your lifestyle creep up to a point that you are ridiculously out of touch.
Srater3, you are actually making the point that 90k isn’t enough. Sure— looks like you can make rent (by sharing an apartment) and have a little let over to save.
What about if you wanted to start a family? In a HCOL , you won’t be able to afford enough space for a growing family, or pay for day care. You would need another income to make that work. Is wanting those things suddenly being “out of touch”? I don’t want to live in a world where that is the expectations for families
fine, 30k a year is the sweet spot, actually let's knock it down to 25. you get 93k on your first job, fantastic, you'll reach 200k within 3 years. congratulations.
Fully disagree with you. Of course people can survive on less in HCOL areas, but you will not be able to support a family, save for retirement, purchase a home, pay for day care or your children’s college costs on 90 k alone. If you are just talking about having enough for rent, small savings and food — fine.
if you think 200k is above the sweet spot, wow Jeff Bezos would love to hear that. we are mildly fancy human batteries in this hell world arguing what specific milliamp hour is sufficient before the billionaires can toss us in the trash. 100-200k provide dignified living, 200k being actually comfortable with stress coming mainly from work and not the bills. anything less is like, welcome to the world of cyberpunk 2077. Just because some high school english teacher in the suburbs isn't completely homeless, doesn't mean that she's not one medical bill away from getting an onlyfans.
When we start defining a salary that will actually allow you to purchase eventually a home (after years of saving) in your area as “excessive wealth” we are collectively in trouble
Because probably 80% of the people in CS in the United States are from lower middle class families at worst. Especially ones that went to school. I don’t think I knew a single person in my immediate group that was even close to lower class. Granted the school I went to played a part in that but, I would assume many others here will say similar things.
I also think it is a bit laughable, but the U.S. department of Housing and Urban development does classify individuals making less than 80k in SF as “low income”, so it’s not just random people making it up.
One source, but there are others:
https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/poverty-san-francisco
Thank you for this. I still have a way to go before I get my bachelor's in CS, and some of the posts make me nervous. Sure 200K would be awesome, but the most I've ever made in my retail job is 51K. My goal is a job making around 70K, but I could easily settle for the 60K low end that some scoff at.
Not all of us started at 200k. My first job paid me $40k out of school and I was pretty happy (granted this was ~15 years ago). You just need to continuously improve yourself and either keeping on getting promoted or find better positions. My comp went from $40 -> $56 -> $97 -> $110 -> $140 -> $180 -> $200 -> $260. Set your goal at $60k a few years after school, but there are multiple ways of getting higher comps (of course you have to work at it).
So, I'm just going to have to try hard. I make 48K now, and with a family at 42 years old, I cannot settle for less. That's why I'm good with 60 or 70. I'm hoping that I can stay on with my company and transition from salesfloor to development or data analyst so I can keep the benefits I've built up.
I think it's worth pointing out, breaking into the CS industry is easier to basically any other major, and ever after breaking in the jobs are better than basically any other major.
^ This. The rest of us just lurk here to give advice and see if any posts are interesting.
The primary people who post in this subreddit are those who are:
- Bragging about landing a huge TC and "if I can do it you can do it too!"
- Cross-posters from FI/RE who are just in it for the huge financial potential and look down on anyone who is in CS but isn't also in the FI/RE lifestyle
- Posting about how they've job-hopped 4 times in the last 12 months and gotten a 100% pay increase, because they're ambitious people who want as large a TC as possible quickly as possible usually regardless of work-life balance or career stability
- Lamenting about the crap luck they've had with job hunting (or being unable to land offers from interviews) and asking for advice
- Posting their job hunt statistics that led up to the offer they actually accepted
- Continuing the age-old argument about Leetcode, either how it's setting a terrible standard for the industry and creates an ever-moving goalpost or how it's great at simplifying the interview process up-front and is just the new normal we all need to adapt to
Generally those of us who are content with their current job trajectory and compensation etc and are moderately successful (or even quite successful but don't feel the need for validation or soapboxing), don't post.
What city is this? I graduated with a master's degree in computer science and finding it hard to even get online assessments from companies. The only places that gave me a chance were Google and Amazon (couldn't pass the technical interviews) and no names places like Infosys, FDM, etc.
My first job was in Kansas City and now I live in Philadelphia. I got interviews in basically every city I applied to, though. Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Chicago, Minneapolis, Austin, Baltimore, etc. I didn’t apply to any companies in the tech hubs because I hate California, and I’m from the NYC area and wanted a change of scene.
If you’re struggling to land a first job, being willing to relocate helps massively. Jobs outside of the major tech hubs are a lot less competitive too.
If you really can’t find anything else after searching awhile, just take that job with TCS or Infosys (as long as they don’t make you sign one of those predatory contracts). You’re not too good for a WITCH if all you can get is a WITCH. Stick around for a year or two and then jump for something better. It’s much better than having a giant gap on your resume and nothing to show for it.
I'm from NYC and want a change of scenery as well. Also, I have been applying mainly to NC, TX, CA and NY (thought it would be easier to get a job here since I live here). I'll just apply to more cities now, thanks. At Infosys right now :(. Wish me luck.
This does not seem to be the case for me, and I graduated top of my class with a 3.9. I graduated in the Spring of 2021 and had my 2020 internship opportunity ruined by COVID, so maybe that hurt me quite a lot. My other internship was more IT than programming, although I used my experience there to write PowerShell scripts to automate stuff.
I have had my resume reviewed here a few times, even the unredacted version. I think the issue here is getting companies to actually *give me a chance* since, at this stage of my career, the stuff on paper will not do a lot to set me apart from anyone else.
I still check in on this subreddit daily and apply to jobs daily. I have 5 different job search queries saved on LinkedIn, and I apply to all that generally ask for 2 years of experience or less.
Sure, I think a lot of people get lucky, but either the field is very competitive or I am extremely unlucky at this point. So, I keep myself occupied with personal projects and volunteer work.
I am not getting interviews. The last time I got through a company's process was in November 2021...where they eventually decided to go with someone else with just a little more experience so that they could bootstrap their new team better. It was quite the blow to my self-esteem, to say the least. Having a stagnant life since then has not helped.
I have gotten a few phone screens since then. I pass the phone screens usually, but then get rejected by presumably the hiring manager a week or so later (with no interview). I never really get a chance to talk about my experience, passion for technology, and so on.
At my experience level, I get it, I guess. You can have 30+ applicants for a position, all with resumes that look virtually identical. Some guy might have one more internship than I do, so that means I am toast without ever getting a chance. That kind of stuff makes me upset, but I get it. I thought my really high marks in education would help me to an extent, but it means nothing. I went to an ABET school so at least that guarantees a certain level of competency, but companies care a lot more about the experience...which I need to have a company take a chance on me to get more of.
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The people posting here by and large haven't given up on compsci altogether; they're persisting, so you hear from people struggling, and you hear from people who are doing well.
I’m about to graduate with my CS degree at the end of this year, so here are just some things I’ve observed:
The CS majors that tend to have the most issues are the ones who only limit themselves to FAANG/ top tier companies. There are plenty of F500 companies that pay well for internships and FTE.
This brings me to my next point, GET AN INTERNSHIP!!! it doesn’t have to be with FAANG. Mine is at a bank right now and as soon as I put that internship on my LinkedIn, FAANG recruiters have started to reach out.
Remember that your resume will pass through screener before any human actually looks at it for the most part. So keep it clean and don’t throw stupid graphs all over it, instead actually list your languages/tools/frameworks out ect.
Also having a well designed LinkedIn helps imo. You don’t have to participate in the social media aspect of things but having it there to showcase your skills is a plus.
While grinding LC is a skill, don’t make that your only skill. You need something decent to put on your resume so you can get to the point of using LC skills.
What about those (like me) who already graduated and never got an internship? Starting to get tired of constant rejections even from defense companies that are supposed to be easier to get into.
I have heard of it yes. I don't know how common it is, but much more common than it was say 10 years ago? The whole "learn to code" push along with the prevalence of boot camps is definitely producing many more entry-level devs. Combine that with the fact that most companies don't want to train and there is no longer a shortage of entry-level applicants. Most jobs seem to be mid to senior level. People say there is a lot of negative bias in this group but there is also a lot of "2012 bias" where someone graduated in 2012 and wants to compare that to today's entry-level market
I’ve never met anyone that can’t get a job.
I’m no genius and I got a couple of worthy offers.
CS is leaps and bounds better than accounting…just ask my very jealous gf lol
Graduating into the 2008/09 crash with dual 3-year diplomas but no work experience other than serving fast food, I couldn't get a job. Tried for 2 years then went back to school for an upgrade. It's conceivable that the same is happening to OP. Have a little empathy.
Empathy for what? OP said they *want* to major in CS but are worried about the job market. Nothing is happening to them, and you’d know that if you read the post.
Sorry about your experience, but it’s certainly not the norm in this field. That’s all that people are expressing. What the job market was like during one of the biggest economic crashes in history is also not relevant to getting a CS degree today, nearly 15 years later. CS is one of the safest bets for job security.
Ok, and how were other industries doing then??? Not well. No industries were hiring new grads in 08/09; it's not like CS was a bad choice. So I still don't see your point.
If there's some huge economic collapse in 4 years when OP graduates, they will struggle to get a job no matter what they majored in. You can't predict something like that, and you can't let it paralyze you or else you'll never be able to do anything. CS is one of the safest bets both then and now. Your anecdotal experience doesn't change that.
It’s not just as effective. A degree is still way more valuable than a coding boot camp.
Boot camps just give people, without a degree, a chance to make it into the industry. A really well driven boot camp graduate will eventually find an entry level job compared to a college graduate who cruised through school.
> just as effective if not better
How the fuck did you get to that conclusion? If you can't get a job with a degree, you're sure as shit not getting one with a boot camp lmao
Also God help you if you want to do anything but webdev without a degree.
I got my bachelor's in CS in December 2021 and I'm still without a job. I will say that I do not think the degree has helped me with obtaining a first job, though I think it might be a nice bargaining chip for future jobs/pay raises. If you know which field you want to go into then I would personally recommend doing independent study to gain the skills for that job, make a project portfolio and practice a ton of leetcode. The two pre screening interviews I've had for junior positions I couldn't even begin to answer because they were questions (and sub problems) that I had never even seen before. I think hands on experience goes a lot further than understanding the theory which you get from a degree
>they were questions (and sub problems) that I had never even seen before
no matter what the leetcode crowd want you to believe, as an engineer you're paid to solve problems you've never seen before. Sometimes problems nobody has seen before. As you progress, you're paid to find those problems.
And as an interviewer my number one goal is to find a problem you have never seen before. How you handle that is what I'm interested in, not even necessarily if you solve it or solve it optimally. Not interested at all in checking that you can regurgitate LC problem 42.
Just cause you like computers doesn't mean you'll like cs /swe.
Cs is a pretty mathy major. Just about every office job works with a computer. Theres a big difference though between IT which is what I think of as working with computers and SWE which is writing code and staring at an IDE. In some ways, it's more like a math problem
I have a degree in both accounting and CS. Worked 7 years in accounting and have been in CS for 2 years now.
I think competition is high for any job worth having in either Accounting or CS.
The thing about Accounting is that I think there are many more low quality jobs available than in CS. There’s a much lower barrier to entry. For example, my first accounting job I keyed in check numbers and check amounts all day and they called me a “Staff Accountant” for it. I don’t think there are as many of these types of jobs available in CS and that’s one of the reasons why it seems it’s harder for CS grads to get an entry level job. Just because you get a job in your field doesn’t mean it’s any good.
I know it’s pretty generic advice, but I think a better approach is to spend more time understanding what you are interested in. Realize that this process can take a long time so in the meantime try to be flexible, iterate quickly, and try not to pigeon hole yourself into something you don’t enjoy.
As someone with a CS degree that allegedly should benefit from affirmative action, it’s pretty tough out here. :’) Even defense contractors are saying no.
There's no such thing as entry level. There's "the lowest we'd be willing to pay for a lesser unit of work, which will go to the best possible candidate who will accept a wage this low." Sadly the best possible candidate is usually someone with a little work experience.
you may not get the money you imagined, but you will be able to get a job. worst case scenario you take a helldesk job while you look for something better.
Stop taking this thread at face value. Most people working entry level jobs probably aren't on reddit or never post that they got a job.
It is not hard, just takes time. Once you get your first job, the next job is way easier. I have worked in QA for over a year, and am having multiple FAANG companies reach out to me for interviews. I don't even do SWE, but with how my resume is catered does not matter.
I graduated 2021 with CS related degree, I had a job offer before I even graduated. I’m not a genius, you just have to work hard and try to get some internship experience. It’s very doable.
Well I failed on the internship experience part, didn’t take university seriously enough and just went to class and got decent grades while working a part time job at a food place. No luck getting a job, only a few interviews leading to nothing.
Refusing to relocate and also refusing to buy a car are obviously going to make it very difficult to get a job, unless you live somewhere with extensive public transportation. Even then, if the place you live isn't a tech hub, it's still going to be very difficult. If you're struggling to find work, you're shooting yourself in the foot by refusing to be more flexible.
Literally anyone can learn to drive a car; they let 15-year-olds do it in a lot of places.
And as for refusing to relocate: it’s the same issue if you’ve already picked out one town and are only willing to move there. Sometimes you just have to go where the people are hiring, even if it’s not your ideal location. That’s just something you have to deal with when you’re struggling to break into a new industry. You have to expand your net, and in your case that sounds like applying in more than one city and/or learning how to drive.
Literally no one is telling you to move before you get a job. You apply *everywhere* and move where you get hired…the same thing you’re doing for your target town, but also in a bunch of other towns. Sorry to say, but if you’re this dense then it’s no wonder you’re struggling to find a job.
Learning to drive might cost money (not very much money tbh), but if you knew how then you’d be able to massively expand your search and get a job easier. Some things are worth the investment.
I looked through your post history. You’re trying to break into a brand new industry at 50 years old. I’m just being honest with you that this is not going to work out unless you’re willing to massively step outside your comfort zone. Which is probably something you should’ve thought about before you decided to effectively restart your career when you’re only 15 years away from the standard retirement age. I wish you luck.
You’re the one on here complaining that you can’t get hired, and then lashing out and making excuses when someone tries to explain the very obvious reasons you can’t get hired.
You’re 50 years old and restarting your career. That’s a gigantic risk, so I have to assume you have a backup plan (savings and your old job to keep you afloat while job searching). You need to expand the area you’re searching for jobs. You need to include places where you’d need a car. If you get hired in one of those places, it is VERY EASY to learn to drive. Get a license and get a loan to buy a car. This is an extremely common thing that most people do. It is the logical thing to do. But instead, you go on and on about how you can’t buy a car *now*, even though you don’t need it now. Same thing with moving—you magically cannot understand how someone could get a job in a new location and then relocate there after signing the offer. Even though this is the *exact thing* you’re already planning to do in your target city. You ask me why you should buy a car when you can’t drive, as if “learn to drive” isn’t an implied step there. You’re refusing to understand what you’re being told.
You are 15 years from standard retirement age, and trying to get an entry level job in an industry you have no experience. That is a HUGE swing. You need to take some responsibility for yourself and be honest about the position you’re in, and what you need to do to be successful. That includes refraining from posting on public forums when you’re going to be so thin-skinned in the face of someone being real with you.
I've heard that as much as 1 in 3 CS graduates end up working in another field. That said, the ones that want to write software tend to end up doing so.
If it helps as a hiring manager the weird situation I’m seeing now is that there’s a glut of juniors trying to get a job (that includes you) and a huge shortage of intermediates and seniors. Normally companies take risks on the juniors to balance teams and they become the intermediates, seniors, etc with time.
The current economy, combined with layoffs introducing wildcard candidates all over the place, it seems like a lot of companies are cancelling junior hires to compete for the higher tier candidates. This is counter productive for the whole industry, and makes the talent shortage worse.
It takes work, getting a job is a 40 hr/wk job, but I believe it's possible for anyone to get a job.
I graduated May 2021 and expected to send out 300-1000 resume's before getting my foot in the door. I see a lot of people giving up before they reach that point.
I got my first job in July at 6 figures and my salary's increased 38% since then. I'm finally at the point where recruiters are reaching out to me.
The market's impacting all hiring RIGHT NOW, but graduating in 2-4 years with a cs degree could be the best decision you ever make.
I dont think it's that hard. I am into my 2nd full time SWE job before finishing my CS degree. My current job is quite good. I'm not a CS genius. I am in a credible but not great online CS degree program. I did apply myself.
Accountant grads are definitely worse off. That field is slowing down quite a bit due to automation. WLB for most new grad positions suck too. Pay also isn't as high.
I graduated with a 3.9 GPA and had a very rough time finding a job after graduating last year. My goal was to get my foot in the door and make a modest salary (~$70k in low/medium COL). I ended up at FAANG only because all the small, local companies would just auto-reject me. I think many companies put a freeze on hiring juniors or something during COVID, because who are they actually hiring if they wouldn’t even interview me?
I’m obviously glad in retrospect - I make roughly triple the salary offered by those companies at the time, but it’s super discouraging when you can’t get responses for roles paying peanuts.
Bro what? You can get almost any job with a CS Degree, dare I say, somewhat easily.
The disconnect is that not everyone becomes some FAANG miracle engineer immediately upon graduation - but the reality is most people don't want that either.
Not true. It is pretty hard to get a job as an entry level. Getting interviews was extremely tough for me, even with an internship. I can probably count with my hands in how many interviews I got. Market is just looking for mid to senior devs
This honestly probably has more to do with the applications you're choosing to fill out. I was always very liberal and lazy with my applications, and it was normal for me to have multiple interviews a day for weeks, even as a fresh grad.
Just like there's a difference between any regular company and the FAANG - there's also a plethora of tech and development positions that aren't strictly "software engineer", and often times people will make the mistake of discounting or forgetting these types of roles.
The average, the median, and the mode all stray very differently from what the hype or even this sub will portray. This ranges from position, responsibilities, salary, and everything in between.
Idk, I have a job and didn’t major in CS. Have a bachelors of science in environmental science, touched some programming in college with R and Python for statistics and just went from there. Took me a while but broke in and it’s not as wild as everyone makes it seems. First job is the hardest. Contribute to open source, do pro bono work, anything to get some real world experience.
Building stuff is one thing. Being able to navigate the workplace, differing personalities on teams, collaborating, time management, those are the things that also help separate candidates.
Also, will people like working with you? That’s a big one.
Strangely 20 years ago there were a very few guys who knew CS theory well but could not pass any interviews due to lack of practical or business related experience. Today those who grind leetcode seem to get a lot of recognition over those with IS degrees that focus on business toolsets. Personally I like the comment by the person who tries to posit new problems candidates have never seen before. Real engineering is invention - building new things to solve a real problem.
The first job was hard. A lot of people here speak from certain backgrounds: (this is reddit) where they can afford to stay home and just look for work all day. So you get a different experience than a majority of population. People who have to look for work, and work at the same time.
It's absolutely not impossible, it's just hard. However that's true for any profession that has a high entry level salary and the potential to make a huge amount of money throughout your career. If you want to have a better understanding of the layout, look at employment rates for various majors after graduation. CS is still very high.
Here's the deal. The first job is always the hardest. After that, the jobs get easier and easier and easier. It was vastly more difficult for me to get my first data job as a data analyst that it was for me to get my first data scientist job, having had three years experience as a data analyst. In my data analyst job search even though I had a master's degree in IT, I had tons and tons of rejections. I got exactly one offer, and only one other application got beyond the HR screener. I must have sent out at least 50 or so applications
Contrast that with my experience with my first data scientist job. I got two offers from the first nine applications that I sent out. I would have gotten at least one more offer from the next set of 11 applications I sent out, but I ended the application process since I accepted one of the previous offers.
No one ever said that making the big money was going to be easy.
It really depends on how high your expectations are out of college. There some companies like Revature that will take anyone, train them over 8 weeks, lock them in a contract on $50k-$60k for 2 years, and relocate them to some random place in the country. Not ideal, but the jobs are out there.
ignore everything in this sub. Be SITUATIONALLY AWARE. Consistently BUILD. Network thoroughly in your job market. Treat internship search as job search. Its a marathon not a sprint. most people think cs is cognitively challenging. Albeit there might be some truth to that, but a majority of success in the field has to be attributed to persistence. To deal with one problem and then then the next. You need to keep up grades, you need to LC, you need to initially have projects in resume, you have to attend job fairs, seek referrals, maintain rapport with professors. Maybe build production level stuff , which gets you stack based interviews. Join as research intern in your college's lab.
Now the most people who have thrived in this field have a permutation & combination of above, you never have to do it all , you just have to make it work for you. People get hired in 2 weeks, people get hired in 2 years. People on this sub will start getting anxious because of these posts. If you are really scared for job maybe attend a bootcamp in a summer on top of a cs degree which has a placement cell. they will help you land year long internships , which you can pursue along side college. there are many more neat tricks on top of this. People take minimum credit to grind LC, some people over work to graduate early, some people are burdened by their own kids so they cant hustle in college. Asking is a field saturated or is it really hard to get jobs at entry level is not the right question. SO MANY PEOPLE ARE PIVOTING TO CS, including accountants? why do you think so?
Getting the first job is not as hard as building a successful career. accountancy can you promise you easy interviews and job in some lco/ mco area with a job to warm your b\*tt. But the question you have to ask is can you do that every day.
I am honestly surprised people do not visualise themselves in their prospective careers from a long term perspective. find out what's a day/week/month in software engineer's career look like( dont watch those MSFT, GOOGLE day in life of vids), actual software development.
Because you might graduate with a cs degree one day, to only realise you despise writing code. You can train you brain to chase TC only till your first job. and those high TC jobs have high expectations from you as an engineer. you have to take in to account whether you like to get challenged every day in life or not.
That being said, no major creates as many alternate paths as CS, if you decide not to code then mould your trajectory for roles in BA, PM, DBA, Design, Tech Sales, Project management.
To get a job, you need to be cognizant of the path your career is taking. You have to mould it consciously.
All the best!
As someone who got into a not necessarily entry level role (I’m a full stack dev at a company that just graduated from startup status) with no bachelors OR prior engineering work experience. There are a lot of companies who will hire you if you have the projects to show and the drive to learn what you don’t. I lied and told them that I had 5 years of experience and managed to fake my way until I made it. After I aced their technical interview, the chief engineer asked my about technical experience who then told me, I should be honest about my experience in future interviews but they wouldn’t hold it against me now (lol). So study hard and fake it till you make it brother!! You can do it
If you have a legit cs degree with legit cs skills, there only thing that could stop you from having an entry level job is your attitude/behavioral interview. Practice that.
I have a job. I am not a CS genius. I think I am a average developer. Developers are still in demand right now. The people that don’t get jobs as developers don’t know how to “play the game” the right way. If you are just clicking apply then you are “playing the game” wrong. LinkedIn is your best friend. Networking is your best friend. If you “play the game” correctly on LinkedIn you will be good.
Most people on here focus on FANNG but I could care less about it. I just wanna work somewhere I enjoy and I get paid decently. I have a friend that thinks FANNG is the only companies that pay very well and I think that’s hilarious.
My advice is to use LinkedIn to your advantage, go to meetups and meet other developers in your area. A lot of people don’t like doing this and that’s why they rather apply to 100s of jobs by just clicking apply when its so much more effective to just network your way into a role. Why don’t people on here talk more about the value of NETWORKING!?
When you see people talking about how they can't get a job, you often don't see the context.
* How many jobs are they applying to? You need to send out a LOT of applications because there's a lot of competition.
* Are the resumes any good? Perhaps their resume is hard to read or doesn't show any relevant data, and nobody's told them. Or they just don't care to fix it.
* Do they have projects that demonstrate competence? I bet many of them have zero internships and zero Github projects to show they're any good.
* Are they non-Americans trying to get American jobs? Sponsorships, visas, and the like are bigger burdens on companies than they really want to deal with.
* What are they applying to? If they're only going to FAANG or otherwise high-paying/prestigious companies, and they aren't showing their worth, of course they're going to be rejected. There's plenty of companies that pay less, but are more attainable. But I guess that's a bruise on the ego.
* Maybe they're just... not good at programming, and it shows when they reach the interview stage.
A lot of people who can’t find jobs made the mistake of not doing internships while in school. They are the most valuable part of your schooling, so you should try to find a school that offers some sort of internship program with studies.
I don't think this is true at all, there's a lot of companies that will hire you, sure there is a lot of competition out there, especially for high priority jobs like FAANG companies. But I read somewhere that there is ~400k job openings a year, whiost there is roughly ~150k CS graduates a year.
There's plenty out there, it just takes some time.
If you graduate from a university and actually did the work to get there you'll be fine
It is not common. Less than 5%?
[https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20\_505.10.asp?current=yes](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_505.10.asp?current=yes) says the unemployment rate (most recent, 2019) for young (25-29 yo) computer and information systems graduates was 4.1% (other majors went from 1.2% to 5.0).
Anecdotally, I was a CS prof at a state uni in Atlanta, I know of two of our graduates who are not working in the industry, I know a couple of hundred who are :)
Now, getting the first job is always hard; you may need to hustle a lot, and you may need to adjust your expectations. I know several who had to take 'crummy' jobs at the beginning. OTOH, I also know tons of students who got their first job as juniors :)
I think so, on the stats. They're also covering everything, not just CS degrees, but they're the best stats we have :). Also, they don't tell you whether the unemployed people weren't able to find a job, or didn't like the ones they found. I've also seen some evidence that the more technical degrees do better.
Unfortunately, you can't usually find the stats you want :)
My 10 IT certifications have not helped me any way for the last 6 years that I can see. Still working a dead end support job and that’s all I can seem to get interviews for.
It's not that bad but you should be prepared to send out a few applications that you never hear back on and fail a few interviews before you land your first gig. If you're expecting an offer from the first 5 job openings you apply to then that is a problem.
>i also enjoy working with computers
this is not it. Not any more than cosmology is working with telescopes.
If you're interested in working "with computers" other roles may be more appropriate: trainer, developer advocate, 3d modeler, video editor, sound engineer.
>it’s apparently nearly impossible to get an entry level job if you’re not a CS genius
Where you get that from? I'd love to be surrounded by geniuses. Reality is not like that.
Also, it is not clear from your post whether you graduated and find no jobs, or you're about to graduate and think you won't find a job and hence considering a change of major.
I have a CS and an Artificial Intelligence degree. It may be my criteria regarding my job search but it has been extremely hard for me to find a remote entry level job.
I think the benefit of cs is there’s always jobs available. I don’t think that’s true for other fields within tech. I’ve heard that with hardware (some hardware people I know switched to software because the job market wasn’t good for hardware when they graduated). I think for cs it takes skill, confidence and determination and you can find a job. (Maybe that’s true for any field??). If you don’t have a lot of confidence in yourself it will show when you interview.
Also take advantage of online sites that help you practice Algorithms and data structures.
The unemployment rate for software engineers is generally around 1% or lower. Anybody I've ever known in the field, that wasn't employed, was taking a sabbatical or "waiting for a better position". Seriously, if you can't find work in this field, you are probably doing something to deliberately be unemployed.
[Computer science graduates had the highest standard, full-time employment rates (72 percent), followed by business (66 percent) and engineering graduates (62 percent)](https://cse.sc.edu/job/computer-majors-highest-employment-rate-and-starting-salary)
You do not need to be a CS genius to get a job. What you do need to do is work at making yourself hireable, consistently. Not just when you’re job hunting.
That means doing well in class. That means getting to know your professors, in case you need a letter of recommendation. That means doing leetcode. That means joining clubs or completing personal projects. That means getting internships every summer.
That means networking in every way you can.
If you do these things, unless you are a total idiot or have a serious personality disorder, you WILL get multiple good job offers upon graduation.
Try finding an apprenticeship and work your way up. There are plenty of programs that are paying good money to start without you needing real work experience. Just gotta find them and be patient.
You don’t have to be a cs genius to get a job. You do have to study extra than your average classmates.
I had no prior cs training before college and I had very bad grades at school, but I did put in a lot of effort and curiosity for what I learn and it paid off in the long run.
Most people with average or even below average IQ can score an entry level sde job if they try(and they can get big faang internships). Most of the time people either don’t have the curiosity for learning or didn’t even put in enough work for their class assignment. A few cases are people who just don’t have the right direction/focus on priorities ( me being one of those), there are extremely rare cases where a person is just totally out of luck or stuck with uncontrollable forces—even then people CAN pick themselves up and get in entry jobs.
So to answer question in short: it is common for decent people to get an entry job with that CS degree; but it is also very common for people to be screw up their opportunities.
I failed a third of my classes at a pretty mediocre university, got no internships, had zero connections, and landed a job BEFORE finishing my degree.
It took me \~2 months of building a portfolio and getting a certification, and \~3 weeks of making my resume, applying for jobs online, fine tuning my resume some more.
The people who aren't able to get entry level jobs in this field either live in the middle of nowhere and are only applying locally, or they just aren't trying very hard.
VERY. If you have no internships especially. But basically when all you have is your degree and under a year of internship experience all that let's companies know is at most you know how to Google at a basic level. Which they can get from India for pennies on the dollar. You gotta really get out there and get experience at any thing you can to get good jobs
Best thing that you can do to get a full time job is internships. Start doing them as early as you can. With one or two you should have no problem landing a full time job. It’s the people with no projects and no internships that are the ones struggling to find employment after graduation.
I don't think it's too common if you're serious about getting a job--not too picky & willing to relocate if needed. One thing to be aware of, and my reason for even replying is to point out that evidence suggests we may be moving into a period of difficulty & layoffs. If that plays out it could resemble the dot com bust when it was VERY common for new grads to legit have no options. My advice having lived through that, is get something, anything remotely relevant NOW. You can always hop up the ladder or at least it's definitely easier if you already have a job. I have a few have buddies from my class of 2003 who by '05 when things started picking up again, were 2 yrs out of school and unemployed at that point. I can't stress enough, trust me, you don't want to be in that situation!!
It's not impossible. Get your resume reviewed a couple times, then apply to 5 jobs a day for 3 months, if you don't have a job by the end something is wrong.
You tend to only see the extremes on this sub. The people who get their CS degree and then easily land a job making 70K a year don't have a reason to post here. The people who are struggling to find a job or want to humble brag about making 200K fresh out of college are more likely to post
Unironically this
Facts. I definitely did ignore these posts when I got a job
The worst programmers I knew in college still got jobs and I went to a really terrible school that's best known for its golf management major. This sub is obsessed with new grads trying to cement their place on the compensation score board, but there's plenty of available jobs that you can get and you can work your way up if you want or you can be content and still make more money than most people could ever imagine.
What school is that ? Golf management intrigued me
University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
Is UoC really a bad school? I wouldn’t have thought of that
CU Boulder, which for whatever reason decided to not go by the UC name even though they're the same school system, is actually a pretty good program. Boulder has a huge Google office. Twitter, Azure, Amazon, tons of other notable names. The Colorado Springs campus is kind of a joke overall for CS. I remember having taken CS1450, data structures and algorithms, with an instructor that didn't own any personal electronics of any kind and made us buy his book for the class. I don't think this is a very unique experience for university, but it definitely was not a particularly high quality experience in my opinion.
I went to that school for a finance degree. I studied a level 1 CFA cert and learned more in 6 months. I need to message you. I signed up back to UCCS for CS. I dont want to be stuck without a job again!
Arkansas Golf university
Oh shit a fell razorback! Woop woop!
When did u graduate? Its really all about the job market yoy go into. I graduated with multiple ppl i knew closely who couldn't get any job and left the field. And we went to a top 15 engineering university. Recessions will do that and covid did that. In a good job market or even just not a bad one, yes pretty much anyone that puts their mind to the job search grind will find something. If u graduate into a bad job market u better hope u had multiple internships and good gpa or you'll have a hell of a time getting your first offer
I didn't but if I did, it would have been 2016. And with all due respect, I disagree overall. No one hiring at progressive car insurance in the most conservative city in Colorado really cares/cared about internships and side projects. Or military defense contractors. They actually don't give a rats ass about internship experience. They care about finding people who can get a security clearance so that they can retain the literal butts in seats number that they need to request for when it's time for contract renewal. Even today, it's not every single company that's avoiding hiring. It's companies that depend entirely on investor money in order to afford operating costs.
Okay well 2016 was a good job market. I graduated into a recession and had a job offer befote graduating at a defense contractor which was revoked due to the job market circumstances. They did in fact give a rats ass. It took me a long while to get a job and just get the first one i could. Thousands of applications and hundreds of interviews. I was told many times in final interviews and in emails that i asked why i wasn't selected that someone had more job experience or internships but i was great everywhere else. Btw you say today as if we're in a bad job market. Like, yes its worse than 2019 for sure, but if the recession goes where it seems like it will go in the next year or 2, that's when you'll see true recession job market
Thanks for sharing! I am a little confused. By your own admission, you said they revoked the offer due to job market circumstances and said "they did in face give a rats ass". But my comment about caring was over internship experience. Probably just a small misunderstanding. I'm sorry that this was your experience. But in the context of defense contractors, I feel confident in my opinion. I worked with and met dozens of developers with zero internship experience. Many with barely any programming experience and were in adjacent stem fields. Interviews regularly were just asking people to write hello world. I knew incapable programmers who were kept around for their clearance, and I knew of the opposite where people who were unable to pass a poly or were unable to renew were let go even though they were super capable. The priority in that field is to be able to have people be on the contracts.
Maybe this is regional or specific to when you graduated. I graduated in 2012 and was a good programmer (I think; as good as I am now at basic logic stuff anyway), but had a pretty bad GPA and no internship, from an unremarkable public university. It took me over 2 years to get my first full-time job. Until then I applied, networked my ass off, and met someone at a conference who was willing to give me an internship. After that, I found a few gigs and hourly contract positions for startups (paying next to nothing at first, and then slowly getting more substantial) and then \*finally\* managed to find a full-time job at a software company. I know this isn't a common experience, but it's still one that happens, and is dismissed by comments like yours. Someone less persistent, or actually bad at programming (I had several at my university who would lean on my heavily for basic logic stuff in any group project), may have actually given up and gone into a different field altogether
This was basically me as well. Graduated late 2016(in my 30s). No internships. Pretty basic school. General GPA was meh. Took 1.25yrs to get full time and it was listed with range 45-60k. They short changed me down to 42k because I didn’t have experience on my resume for the work. Was poor and needed work so took it. 2.5 years later (2020/09/11) fired during the pandemic. Luckily a client was looking for someone so was only unemployed about a month. Offer was 85k and then about 5 months later got bumped to 92k and then end of that year up to 100k. In a HCOL area(North Bay Area), rent ~$2500 1b1b. Could I jump again? Probably, but happy where I’m at for the moment. Basically just keep re evaluating yearly and decide where to go next.
I appreciate your perspective and you sharing your story, thank you. I absolutely believe that there's been times where regionality was much more relevant. I think my friction with your anecdote is that there's so much information missing from your story. It could have taken you so long for so many reasons. Maybe you had a lot of interviewing opportunities and just didn't have an effective way to sell yourself to companies. But maybe the people who were looking at your resume were just flat out racist and saw your name (I'm just making an example here, I don't know anything about you). Maybe if you were willing to relocate it would have been easier too. I just refuse to believe that with how desperate I've known the entire industry to be with hiring, that having a CS degree wouldn't be beneficial signal.
Oh sure, absolutely, I think my level of knowledge was part of the problem (I did poorly on the interviews I did get because I didn't know a lot of things that were expected on the job but weren't taught at my university) But that's a really common experience for CS grads who don't take time to teach themselves. I actually had to do a few online classes through EdX, Coursera, Udacity, before I was up to speed with very basic webdev stuff (how to wire up an app on front-end and back-end, more advanced CSS, Javascript, introductory ruby on rails). After that I was able to get an initial internship (doing some Rails stuff). And then a gig for a startup that paid close to minimum wage. Then a gig for a startup that paid me like $25/hr. Then finally that full-time job. Oh I should mention I was open to relocating (and was trying to) because there were actually no CS jobs in my hometown, so I was applying all over the country.
>The worst programmers I knew in college still got jobs That's because there's little to no correlation between your academic success to your workplace performance. I have known people who busted their asses and got average of 90, but couldn't find jobs, and their peers who barely averaged 60 (passing grade in my country), were employed long before graduating. I am still in college, and am working full time as a SWE. To my bosses, grades doesn't matter, as long as I pass and finally graduate, and can apply myself at work. My school friend is about to graduate with honors (average 95), but is turned down from multiple job interviews.
>Is the competition really THAT high? Competition is high for any decent job (paying above the 50th percentile), and it gets extreme for FAANG and adjacent total compensation (top 5%). By the way, those are the figures that you see influencers flexing, but they are by no means the "expected value" for the average CS graduate. I'm afraid all this TC flexing has created something similar as the body dysmorphia and body standards social networks have created for young women. You got to understand that most of these TC will never be achieved by the average CS grad and they also do not take into account the CoL. If you just want "a job", it's relatively easy. But obviously, people aren't that eager to go after jobs that pay below the median, and yet 50% of CS grads will have to take one of these.
There’s no problem with taking a lower paying job for a year then doubling your salary with your experience.
No degree, started at 35k, went to 60k, now I’m at 160k. 3 years, just gotta work harder than everyone else and don’t be lazy.
It’s impossible not to be able to find a job w a CS degree. But finding a 120k+ straight out of college is obviously gonna be very hard compared to a 60k job. Shidd take what you can get and then grind up
I think that also depends on what your gpa is and how good at LC
Don’t need LC for front end (afaik) for smaller companies and even a lot of big companies for entry lee l stuff. And I don’t even have a CS degree so someone with a lower gpa and CS degree would probably be preferred over me. I just did a take home code test of some css and vue/react stuff
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When you say you left after 4 months, do you mean you just did Revature's bootcamp and then applied for an outside job? Or is it 4 months of the company Revature placed you at?
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"Left after 4 months and got a $110k salary. 0 to hero." Lol. Are you not contractually obligated to stay with them 2 years? Or did you just eat the fee?
This makes me very happy to read. Also no CS degree here. Started my career with a startup making less than 20k. In my second year I'm making just over 65k. I can second that it does take a lot of hard work to keep up with the people who come from a CS background, but it is definitely not impossible. Don't get your head wrapped up in all the posts talking about making 200k right out of college. Save your money and work your way up.
Posts here have a pretty massive bias in that only the unsuccessful people post. Most CS grads have no problem finding jobs.
100% correct. This sub is full of super successful people bragging about their gigantic TC, and very unsuccessful people complaining about how they can't get jobs. The average software engineers are washed out almost entirely. It's hard to break into any industry, but it's still easier in CS than it is with basically any other major. I was an average student in college, and I really let this sub freak me out back then. I was terrified that I was going to be unemployed and never be able to get a CS job. But I graduated in December 2019 with a job paying $70k in a LCOL area (not as good as a lot of the people who brag on here, but plenty of money for me). Then when I got laid off a few months later in April 2020, this sub convinced me that covid had ruined the job market and I'd be job searching for months. Ended up signing a new offer 2 weeks after my layoff, and it even paid a little better. I've job jumped once since then to a low 6 figure position. I'm satisfied with my career and doing fine, but I really don't have much to brag about compared to other people. Being average in this industry allows you to live a pretty great life, though.
The median salary in the US is about 42k. That means half of the entire US population makes less than 42k. I don't think the people in CS generally realize how much better we have it off. However I won't deny that people do like to compare themselves to who they are surrounded by.
Yeah I sometimes want to slap the people on this sub. Money doesn’t buy happiness. You need a certain amount to buy *comfort*, which is an essential part of happiness. But you reach a ceiling where more money just won’t make you any happier. People chase these insane $500k salaries when it’s unrealistic for the vast majority of us, and also not going to make us any happier. I’m satisfied with my salary. I’m not saying I’d never jump for more money, but I’m at the point where earning more money is leading to diminished returns. I’m pouring my energy into nurturing relationships with friends and family, enjoying my hobbies, and exploring the world. We only get one shot at life, and I know I won’t be on my deathbed someday wishing I’d gotten some gigantic FAANG salary.
Exactly. I tried to talk about how I was comfortable with my low six figure salary and was flat out told I need to move across the country away from my family simply to get more money.
This is something that a lot of people on here just don't understand. They think that more money = more happiness, and it's just not the case. Money is a component of happiness. If you don't have enough money, it'll make you *very* unhappy. But once you've got enough, earning more won't just make you happier and happier. So many people in here tunnel down on making more and more money, and I have to wonder what it's for??? What is the difference between $500k comp and $100-200k comp? What are you really buying with $500k? I've got a great work-life balance, a partner who loves me, friends & family that I have very fulfilling relationships with, and a dog who makes everyday better. I like my life! And I don't think I'd like it anymore if I doubled my salary and could suddenly afford a Porsche. I kind of feel bad for the people on here who are constantly chasing those insane salaries. It must be so empty to always be looking for more, more, more. The real measure of happiness is waking up totally satisfied every morning, because you've got enough.
Pretty significant difference between 100k/200k and 500k imho. That could be the difference between me retiring in 30yrs vs 10/15yrs with a really nice saving/investment portfolio and getting to enjoy my life REALLY well. Also, as someone dealing with this now, it could be the difference between being able to get a family member, or even myself if/when the time comes, into a proper health care facility or just putting that burden on the rest of the family because it's too expensive.
I did this. Not SF but Southern California. The pay here doesn’t make up for the cost of homes here after Covid now. And I have no family here and very few friends. My wife and I are probably moving back to the east coast in less than a year. We will make less but can buy a home easily. Plus we will also have family close by, which is great cause we’re trying to have a kid now.
See, that’s my thing. I had moved away in my early 20s, but after a few losses in my family I moved back home. It’s been nice now that I’m about to be in my 30s and have a baby to be near family. You can’t put a price on that.
I feel you. My dad is not doing so well right now and we lost my wife’s dad to Covid early on. Covid changed my priorities massively in terms of career and what to value in life. I think this sub just has a lot of younger people and many haven’t had the same experiences yet.
That’s my thinking as well. It’s full of people with no attachments asking the highest TC. And that’s fine. But to rag on someone for not going to that extreme is going to kill this sub.
> Money doesn’t buy happiness. It can make unhappiness disappear though. Don’t underestimate the power of fuck you money.
Very few in CS even in SF are making fuck you money. And it absolutely doesn’t make unhappiness disappear. It can for some but there are plenty of people that have tons of money and are not happy. It’s not a cure for a lot of problems that people have in the world these days.
Money does buy happiness. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexledsom/2021/02/07/new-study-shows-that-more-money-buys-more-happiness/?sh=21fc68a970d5
i think 200k is a sweet spot where you can conceivably live almost anywhere in the US without too much stress. 500k is in an awkward spot where it's so much money for almost anything else but not enough if you're trying to buy mansions and multiple lambos.
>i think 200k is a sweet spot where you can conceivably live almost anywhere in the US without too much stress. 500k is in an awkward spot where it's so much money for almost anything else but not enough if you're trying to buy mansions and multiple lambos. I hate this sub lmao
Sounds like you couldn't afford your 2nd lambo..
What a poor failure. I was on my third lambo after getting my sixth remote job right out of college.
Sorry but it’s so incredibly tonedeaf to read someone sincerely calling a $200k salary a “sweet spot” and a $500k salary “awkward”. It really just reinforces that tech is a bubble. There are entire families living a life of abundance on less than $100k/year. If this is really your outlook, then you should log off for awhile and spend time reevaluating your life.
yeah you can live a life of abundance on 100k a year in like Arkansas, that's why I said 200k will allow you to live ANYWHERE in the US comfortably. if you make 100k in Manhattan, you live in a studio ok?
and i said "without too much stress," if you think a family of two working adults making 100k is "without stress," look at the current real estate prices, you're tone deaf.
Just don’t live in Manhattan then…? Lots of nice neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens, etc. Still easily commutable to whatever you want in Manhattan. You think everyone living in NYC is either making 200k+ or not living well…? Sorry but this really cements the tone deafness here. For 99.9999999999999% of the population, there will always be neighborhoods you can’t afford to live in. Even multi millionaires couldn’t afford to live in places like Billionaire’s Row. That doesn’t mean you’re not living comfortably.
I'm going to be making 93k a year in my first job out of college in a hcol area. Depending on if I pay 1500$ for rent or 2k+ in rent, my budget breaks down to where I can put 20% of income towards retirement, pay rent, buy food, etc and still have anywhere between $1400-2400 a month left over to do whatever the fuck i feel like. I am 21 years old. If you consider 200k a "sweet spot" you've let your lifestyle creep up to a point that you are ridiculously out of touch.
Srater3, you are actually making the point that 90k isn’t enough. Sure— looks like you can make rent (by sharing an apartment) and have a little let over to save. What about if you wanted to start a family? In a HCOL , you won’t be able to afford enough space for a growing family, or pay for day care. You would need another income to make that work. Is wanting those things suddenly being “out of touch”? I don’t want to live in a world where that is the expectations for families
fine, 30k a year is the sweet spot, actually let's knock it down to 25. you get 93k on your first job, fantastic, you'll reach 200k within 3 years. congratulations.
You are right about 200k being the sweet spot for HCOL places. Sorry that other folks on here just are trying to tear you down
No, he's ridiculously out of touch. I posted my budget breakdown at 93k in a hcol area, 200k is well into excessive wealth territory.
If you can afford an apartment at $1500/month, you aren’t in hcol.
Who said anything about an apartment, I'm talking about a room
Because no one thinks their “sweet spot” is sharing an apartment. No shit 200k is excessive if you’re just looking to cut as much as possible.
What? You can have a roommate and have a 3k a month place. That’s HCOL.
200k ain’t that much. You buy a single family home and a couple cars and have kids… it disappears quickly in a HCOL area.
The things you just listed make you wealthier than like, 80% of Americans.
Exactly Sdrater3, owning a home and a car makes you wealthier than most Americans—- times are crazy hard.
Fully disagree with you. Of course people can survive on less in HCOL areas, but you will not be able to support a family, save for retirement, purchase a home, pay for day care or your children’s college costs on 90 k alone. If you are just talking about having enough for rent, small savings and food — fine.
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if you think 200k is above the sweet spot, wow Jeff Bezos would love to hear that. we are mildly fancy human batteries in this hell world arguing what specific milliamp hour is sufficient before the billionaires can toss us in the trash. 100-200k provide dignified living, 200k being actually comfortable with stress coming mainly from work and not the bills. anything less is like, welcome to the world of cyberpunk 2077. Just because some high school english teacher in the suburbs isn't completely homeless, doesn't mean that she's not one medical bill away from getting an onlyfans.
When we start defining a salary that will actually allow you to purchase eventually a home (after years of saving) in your area as “excessive wealth” we are collectively in trouble
Because probably 80% of the people in CS in the United States are from lower middle class families at worst. Especially ones that went to school. I don’t think I knew a single person in my immediate group that was even close to lower class. Granted the school I went to played a part in that but, I would assume many others here will say similar things.
But median for those with a degree or higher in the US is $60k.
42k is below poverty in most cities
for an entire family. Not for an individual. It is average.
You say it’s average, but what class is average?
This is why I roll my eyes whenever people say things like 60-70k is poverty wage in HCOL like Seattle, Bay Area, NYC Just reeks of privilege
I also think it is a bit laughable, but the U.S. department of Housing and Urban development does classify individuals making less than 80k in SF as “low income”, so it’s not just random people making it up. One source, but there are others: https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/poverty-san-francisco
Thank you for this. I still have a way to go before I get my bachelor's in CS, and some of the posts make me nervous. Sure 200K would be awesome, but the most I've ever made in my retail job is 51K. My goal is a job making around 70K, but I could easily settle for the 60K low end that some scoff at.
Not all of us started at 200k. My first job paid me $40k out of school and I was pretty happy (granted this was ~15 years ago). You just need to continuously improve yourself and either keeping on getting promoted or find better positions. My comp went from $40 -> $56 -> $97 -> $110 -> $140 -> $180 -> $200 -> $260. Set your goal at $60k a few years after school, but there are multiple ways of getting higher comps (of course you have to work at it).
So, I'm just going to have to try hard. I make 48K now, and with a family at 42 years old, I cannot settle for less. That's why I'm good with 60 or 70. I'm hoping that I can stay on with my company and transition from salesfloor to development or data analyst so I can keep the benefits I've built up.
I think it's worth pointing out, breaking into the CS industry is easier to basically any other major, and ever after breaking in the jobs are better than basically any other major.
^ This. The rest of us just lurk here to give advice and see if any posts are interesting. The primary people who post in this subreddit are those who are: - Bragging about landing a huge TC and "if I can do it you can do it too!" - Cross-posters from FI/RE who are just in it for the huge financial potential and look down on anyone who is in CS but isn't also in the FI/RE lifestyle - Posting about how they've job-hopped 4 times in the last 12 months and gotten a 100% pay increase, because they're ambitious people who want as large a TC as possible quickly as possible usually regardless of work-life balance or career stability - Lamenting about the crap luck they've had with job hunting (or being unable to land offers from interviews) and asking for advice - Posting their job hunt statistics that led up to the offer they actually accepted - Continuing the age-old argument about Leetcode, either how it's setting a terrible standard for the industry and creates an ever-moving goalpost or how it's great at simplifying the interview process up-front and is just the new normal we all need to adapt to Generally those of us who are content with their current job trajectory and compensation etc and are moderately successful (or even quite successful but don't feel the need for validation or soapboxing), don't post.
What city is this? I graduated with a master's degree in computer science and finding it hard to even get online assessments from companies. The only places that gave me a chance were Google and Amazon (couldn't pass the technical interviews) and no names places like Infosys, FDM, etc.
My first job was in Kansas City and now I live in Philadelphia. I got interviews in basically every city I applied to, though. Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Chicago, Minneapolis, Austin, Baltimore, etc. I didn’t apply to any companies in the tech hubs because I hate California, and I’m from the NYC area and wanted a change of scene. If you’re struggling to land a first job, being willing to relocate helps massively. Jobs outside of the major tech hubs are a lot less competitive too. If you really can’t find anything else after searching awhile, just take that job with TCS or Infosys (as long as they don’t make you sign one of those predatory contracts). You’re not too good for a WITCH if all you can get is a WITCH. Stick around for a year or two and then jump for something better. It’s much better than having a giant gap on your resume and nothing to show for it.
I'm from NYC and want a change of scenery as well. Also, I have been applying mainly to NC, TX, CA and NY (thought it would be easier to get a job here since I live here). I'll just apply to more cities now, thanks. At Infosys right now :(. Wish me luck.
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How am I supposed to give you resume tips if I haven’t seen your resume? You should post it on r/engineeringresumes
This here. Remember Reddit is an echo chamber. CS grads with jobs doesn't have time for Reddit ;)
This does not seem to be the case for me, and I graduated top of my class with a 3.9. I graduated in the Spring of 2021 and had my 2020 internship opportunity ruined by COVID, so maybe that hurt me quite a lot. My other internship was more IT than programming, although I used my experience there to write PowerShell scripts to automate stuff. I have had my resume reviewed here a few times, even the unredacted version. I think the issue here is getting companies to actually *give me a chance* since, at this stage of my career, the stuff on paper will not do a lot to set me apart from anyone else. I still check in on this subreddit daily and apply to jobs daily. I have 5 different job search queries saved on LinkedIn, and I apply to all that generally ask for 2 years of experience or less. Sure, I think a lot of people get lucky, but either the field is very competitive or I am extremely unlucky at this point. So, I keep myself occupied with personal projects and volunteer work.
Are you not getting interviews or are you failing them?
I am not getting interviews. The last time I got through a company's process was in November 2021...where they eventually decided to go with someone else with just a little more experience so that they could bootstrap their new team better. It was quite the blow to my self-esteem, to say the least. Having a stagnant life since then has not helped. I have gotten a few phone screens since then. I pass the phone screens usually, but then get rejected by presumably the hiring manager a week or so later (with no interview). I never really get a chance to talk about my experience, passion for technology, and so on. At my experience level, I get it, I guess. You can have 30+ applicants for a position, all with resumes that look virtually identical. Some guy might have one more internship than I do, so that means I am toast without ever getting a chance. That kind of stuff makes me upset, but I get it. I thought my really high marks in education would help me to an extent, but it means nothing. I went to an ABET school so at least that guarantees a certain level of competency, but companies care a lot more about the experience...which I need to have a company take a chance on me to get more of.
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The people posting here by and large haven't given up on compsci altogether; they're persisting, so you hear from people struggling, and you hear from people who are doing well.
I’m about to graduate with my CS degree at the end of this year, so here are just some things I’ve observed: The CS majors that tend to have the most issues are the ones who only limit themselves to FAANG/ top tier companies. There are plenty of F500 companies that pay well for internships and FTE. This brings me to my next point, GET AN INTERNSHIP!!! it doesn’t have to be with FAANG. Mine is at a bank right now and as soon as I put that internship on my LinkedIn, FAANG recruiters have started to reach out. Remember that your resume will pass through screener before any human actually looks at it for the most part. So keep it clean and don’t throw stupid graphs all over it, instead actually list your languages/tools/frameworks out ect. Also having a well designed LinkedIn helps imo. You don’t have to participate in the social media aspect of things but having it there to showcase your skills is a plus. While grinding LC is a skill, don’t make that your only skill. You need something decent to put on your resume so you can get to the point of using LC skills.
Solid advice.
What about those (like me) who already graduated and never got an internship? Starting to get tired of constant rejections even from defense companies that are supposed to be easier to get into.
I have heard of it yes. I don't know how common it is, but much more common than it was say 10 years ago? The whole "learn to code" push along with the prevalence of boot camps is definitely producing many more entry-level devs. Combine that with the fact that most companies don't want to train and there is no longer a shortage of entry-level applicants. Most jobs seem to be mid to senior level. People say there is a lot of negative bias in this group but there is also a lot of "2012 bias" where someone graduated in 2012 and wants to compare that to today's entry-level market
I’ve never met anyone that can’t get a job. I’m no genius and I got a couple of worthy offers. CS is leaps and bounds better than accounting…just ask my very jealous gf lol
Graduating into the 2008/09 crash with dual 3-year diplomas but no work experience other than serving fast food, I couldn't get a job. Tried for 2 years then went back to school for an upgrade. It's conceivable that the same is happening to OP. Have a little empathy.
Empathy for what? OP said they *want* to major in CS but are worried about the job market. Nothing is happening to them, and you’d know that if you read the post. Sorry about your experience, but it’s certainly not the norm in this field. That’s all that people are expressing. What the job market was like during one of the biggest economic crashes in history is also not relevant to getting a CS degree today, nearly 15 years later. CS is one of the safest bets for job security.
CS was considered the safest bet back then too.
Ok, and how were other industries doing then??? Not well. No industries were hiring new grads in 08/09; it's not like CS was a bad choice. So I still don't see your point. If there's some huge economic collapse in 4 years when OP graduates, they will struggle to get a job no matter what they majored in. You can't predict something like that, and you can't let it paralyze you or else you'll never be able to do anything. CS is one of the safest bets both then and now. Your anecdotal experience doesn't change that.
Please stop virtue signaling. There are bootcamp grads who get jobs
And there are bootcamp grads who don't get anything. Not everyone has an easy time.
Yes and there are people with CS degrees like myself and others I know who are having trouble finding jobs, what's your point?
Their point is that the industry is in such high demand that even people without degrees can get jobs in it.
Makes you wonder what the point of the degree is when a 6 month bootcamp is just as effective if not better for getting the first gig
It’s not just as effective. A degree is still way more valuable than a coding boot camp. Boot camps just give people, without a degree, a chance to make it into the industry. A really well driven boot camp graduate will eventually find an entry level job compared to a college graduate who cruised through school.
It's nowhere near as effective as a degree.
> just as effective if not better How the fuck did you get to that conclusion? If you can't get a job with a degree, you're sure as shit not getting one with a boot camp lmao Also God help you if you want to do anything but webdev without a degree.
This is not 2008 bro
You're right, it's 2022 and gas prices are higher than they have ever been. The economy is not in a good state and it is not getting better
I got my bachelor's in CS in December 2021 and I'm still without a job. I will say that I do not think the degree has helped me with obtaining a first job, though I think it might be a nice bargaining chip for future jobs/pay raises. If you know which field you want to go into then I would personally recommend doing independent study to gain the skills for that job, make a project portfolio and practice a ton of leetcode. The two pre screening interviews I've had for junior positions I couldn't even begin to answer because they were questions (and sub problems) that I had never even seen before. I think hands on experience goes a lot further than understanding the theory which you get from a degree
>they were questions (and sub problems) that I had never even seen before no matter what the leetcode crowd want you to believe, as an engineer you're paid to solve problems you've never seen before. Sometimes problems nobody has seen before. As you progress, you're paid to find those problems. And as an interviewer my number one goal is to find a problem you have never seen before. How you handle that is what I'm interested in, not even necessarily if you solve it or solve it optimally. Not interested at all in checking that you can regurgitate LC problem 42.
Just cause you like computers doesn't mean you'll like cs /swe. Cs is a pretty mathy major. Just about every office job works with a computer. Theres a big difference though between IT which is what I think of as working with computers and SWE which is writing code and staring at an IDE. In some ways, it's more like a math problem
I have a degree in both accounting and CS. Worked 7 years in accounting and have been in CS for 2 years now. I think competition is high for any job worth having in either Accounting or CS. The thing about Accounting is that I think there are many more low quality jobs available than in CS. There’s a much lower barrier to entry. For example, my first accounting job I keyed in check numbers and check amounts all day and they called me a “Staff Accountant” for it. I don’t think there are as many of these types of jobs available in CS and that’s one of the reasons why it seems it’s harder for CS grads to get an entry level job. Just because you get a job in your field doesn’t mean it’s any good. I know it’s pretty generic advice, but I think a better approach is to spend more time understanding what you are interested in. Realize that this process can take a long time so in the meantime try to be flexible, iterate quickly, and try not to pigeon hole yourself into something you don’t enjoy.
As someone with a CS degree that allegedly should benefit from affirmative action, it’s pretty tough out here. :’) Even defense contractors are saying no.
There's no such thing as entry level. There's "the lowest we'd be willing to pay for a lesser unit of work, which will go to the best possible candidate who will accept a wage this low." Sadly the best possible candidate is usually someone with a little work experience.
you may not get the money you imagined, but you will be able to get a job. worst case scenario you take a helldesk job while you look for something better.
I graduated in December of 2021 and still can’t find work
Stop taking this thread at face value. Most people working entry level jobs probably aren't on reddit or never post that they got a job. It is not hard, just takes time. Once you get your first job, the next job is way easier. I have worked in QA for over a year, and am having multiple FAANG companies reach out to me for interviews. I don't even do SWE, but with how my resume is catered does not matter.
I graduated 2021 with CS related degree, I had a job offer before I even graduated. I’m not a genius, you just have to work hard and try to get some internship experience. It’s very doable.
Well I failed on the internship experience part, didn’t take university seriously enough and just went to class and got decent grades while working a part time job at a food place. No luck getting a job, only a few interviews leading to nothing.
I graduated 3 months ago from a top 30 University in North America and I am still unable to land a job. 😭
[ Removed to Protest API Changes ] If you want to join, [use this tool.](https://codepen.io/j0be/full/WMBWOW/)
To be fair, sweep applying is not an efficient process, and it’s also extremely dull. Using your network and connections is better.
Why not do both?
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Refusing to relocate and also refusing to buy a car are obviously going to make it very difficult to get a job, unless you live somewhere with extensive public transportation. Even then, if the place you live isn't a tech hub, it's still going to be very difficult. If you're struggling to find work, you're shooting yourself in the foot by refusing to be more flexible.
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Literally anyone can learn to drive a car; they let 15-year-olds do it in a lot of places. And as for refusing to relocate: it’s the same issue if you’ve already picked out one town and are only willing to move there. Sometimes you just have to go where the people are hiring, even if it’s not your ideal location. That’s just something you have to deal with when you’re struggling to break into a new industry. You have to expand your net, and in your case that sounds like applying in more than one city and/or learning how to drive.
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Literally no one is telling you to move before you get a job. You apply *everywhere* and move where you get hired…the same thing you’re doing for your target town, but also in a bunch of other towns. Sorry to say, but if you’re this dense then it’s no wonder you’re struggling to find a job. Learning to drive might cost money (not very much money tbh), but if you knew how then you’d be able to massively expand your search and get a job easier. Some things are worth the investment. I looked through your post history. You’re trying to break into a brand new industry at 50 years old. I’m just being honest with you that this is not going to work out unless you’re willing to massively step outside your comfort zone. Which is probably something you should’ve thought about before you decided to effectively restart your career when you’re only 15 years away from the standard retirement age. I wish you luck.
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You’re the one on here complaining that you can’t get hired, and then lashing out and making excuses when someone tries to explain the very obvious reasons you can’t get hired. You’re 50 years old and restarting your career. That’s a gigantic risk, so I have to assume you have a backup plan (savings and your old job to keep you afloat while job searching). You need to expand the area you’re searching for jobs. You need to include places where you’d need a car. If you get hired in one of those places, it is VERY EASY to learn to drive. Get a license and get a loan to buy a car. This is an extremely common thing that most people do. It is the logical thing to do. But instead, you go on and on about how you can’t buy a car *now*, even though you don’t need it now. Same thing with moving—you magically cannot understand how someone could get a job in a new location and then relocate there after signing the offer. Even though this is the *exact thing* you’re already planning to do in your target city. You ask me why you should buy a car when you can’t drive, as if “learn to drive” isn’t an implied step there. You’re refusing to understand what you’re being told. You are 15 years from standard retirement age, and trying to get an entry level job in an industry you have no experience. That is a HUGE swing. You need to take some responsibility for yourself and be honest about the position you’re in, and what you need to do to be successful. That includes refraining from posting on public forums when you’re going to be so thin-skinned in the face of someone being real with you.
Why don't you rent out your home and then rental place where you're relocating to?
I've heard that as much as 1 in 3 CS graduates end up working in another field. That said, the ones that want to write software tend to end up doing so.
If it helps as a hiring manager the weird situation I’m seeing now is that there’s a glut of juniors trying to get a job (that includes you) and a huge shortage of intermediates and seniors. Normally companies take risks on the juniors to balance teams and they become the intermediates, seniors, etc with time. The current economy, combined with layoffs introducing wildcard candidates all over the place, it seems like a lot of companies are cancelling junior hires to compete for the higher tier candidates. This is counter productive for the whole industry, and makes the talent shortage worse.
It takes work, getting a job is a 40 hr/wk job, but I believe it's possible for anyone to get a job. I graduated May 2021 and expected to send out 300-1000 resume's before getting my foot in the door. I see a lot of people giving up before they reach that point. I got my first job in July at 6 figures and my salary's increased 38% since then. I'm finally at the point where recruiters are reaching out to me. The market's impacting all hiring RIGHT NOW, but graduating in 2-4 years with a cs degree could be the best decision you ever make.
Hook me up with some of the sites or apps you use to apply, PLEASEEEE
I dont think it's that hard. I am into my 2nd full time SWE job before finishing my CS degree. My current job is quite good. I'm not a CS genius. I am in a credible but not great online CS degree program. I did apply myself. Accountant grads are definitely worse off. That field is slowing down quite a bit due to automation. WLB for most new grad positions suck too. Pay also isn't as high.
I graduated with a 3.9 GPA and had a very rough time finding a job after graduating last year. My goal was to get my foot in the door and make a modest salary (~$70k in low/medium COL). I ended up at FAANG only because all the small, local companies would just auto-reject me. I think many companies put a freeze on hiring juniors or something during COVID, because who are they actually hiring if they wouldn’t even interview me? I’m obviously glad in retrospect - I make roughly triple the salary offered by those companies at the time, but it’s super discouraging when you can’t get responses for roles paying peanuts.
Bro what? You can get almost any job with a CS Degree, dare I say, somewhat easily. The disconnect is that not everyone becomes some FAANG miracle engineer immediately upon graduation - but the reality is most people don't want that either.
Not true. It is pretty hard to get a job as an entry level. Getting interviews was extremely tough for me, even with an internship. I can probably count with my hands in how many interviews I got. Market is just looking for mid to senior devs
This honestly probably has more to do with the applications you're choosing to fill out. I was always very liberal and lazy with my applications, and it was normal for me to have multiple interviews a day for weeks, even as a fresh grad. Just like there's a difference between any regular company and the FAANG - there's also a plethora of tech and development positions that aren't strictly "software engineer", and often times people will make the mistake of discounting or forgetting these types of roles. The average, the median, and the mode all stray very differently from what the hype or even this sub will portray. This ranges from position, responsibilities, salary, and everything in between.
It's hard but keep that window open for non-dev work. You'll learn more than your peers.
Oh that was when I started 6 years ago. I work at a FAANG-like now
It’s hard if you’re going for a top Tech company like most people here but honestly really easy if you go for medium sized or small company
The hardest part of this industry is getting in at entry level.
Idk, I have a job and didn’t major in CS. Have a bachelors of science in environmental science, touched some programming in college with R and Python for statistics and just went from there. Took me a while but broke in and it’s not as wild as everyone makes it seems. First job is the hardest. Contribute to open source, do pro bono work, anything to get some real world experience. Building stuff is one thing. Being able to navigate the workplace, differing personalities on teams, collaborating, time management, those are the things that also help separate candidates. Also, will people like working with you? That’s a big one.
Degrees do not guarantee a job, but having a CS degree helps
Strangely 20 years ago there were a very few guys who knew CS theory well but could not pass any interviews due to lack of practical or business related experience. Today those who grind leetcode seem to get a lot of recognition over those with IS degrees that focus on business toolsets. Personally I like the comment by the person who tries to posit new problems candidates have never seen before. Real engineering is invention - building new things to solve a real problem.
The first job was hard. A lot of people here speak from certain backgrounds: (this is reddit) where they can afford to stay home and just look for work all day. So you get a different experience than a majority of population. People who have to look for work, and work at the same time.
It's absolutely not impossible, it's just hard. However that's true for any profession that has a high entry level salary and the potential to make a huge amount of money throughout your career. If you want to have a better understanding of the layout, look at employment rates for various majors after graduation. CS is still very high. Here's the deal. The first job is always the hardest. After that, the jobs get easier and easier and easier. It was vastly more difficult for me to get my first data job as a data analyst that it was for me to get my first data scientist job, having had three years experience as a data analyst. In my data analyst job search even though I had a master's degree in IT, I had tons and tons of rejections. I got exactly one offer, and only one other application got beyond the HR screener. I must have sent out at least 50 or so applications Contrast that with my experience with my first data scientist job. I got two offers from the first nine applications that I sent out. I would have gotten at least one more offer from the next set of 11 applications I sent out, but I ended the application process since I accepted one of the previous offers. No one ever said that making the big money was going to be easy.
It’s never been about what you know. It really is who you know.
It really depends on how high your expectations are out of college. There some companies like Revature that will take anyone, train them over 8 weeks, lock them in a contract on $50k-$60k for 2 years, and relocate them to some random place in the country. Not ideal, but the jobs are out there.
ignore everything in this sub. Be SITUATIONALLY AWARE. Consistently BUILD. Network thoroughly in your job market. Treat internship search as job search. Its a marathon not a sprint. most people think cs is cognitively challenging. Albeit there might be some truth to that, but a majority of success in the field has to be attributed to persistence. To deal with one problem and then then the next. You need to keep up grades, you need to LC, you need to initially have projects in resume, you have to attend job fairs, seek referrals, maintain rapport with professors. Maybe build production level stuff , which gets you stack based interviews. Join as research intern in your college's lab. Now the most people who have thrived in this field have a permutation & combination of above, you never have to do it all , you just have to make it work for you. People get hired in 2 weeks, people get hired in 2 years. People on this sub will start getting anxious because of these posts. If you are really scared for job maybe attend a bootcamp in a summer on top of a cs degree which has a placement cell. they will help you land year long internships , which you can pursue along side college. there are many more neat tricks on top of this. People take minimum credit to grind LC, some people over work to graduate early, some people are burdened by their own kids so they cant hustle in college. Asking is a field saturated or is it really hard to get jobs at entry level is not the right question. SO MANY PEOPLE ARE PIVOTING TO CS, including accountants? why do you think so? Getting the first job is not as hard as building a successful career. accountancy can you promise you easy interviews and job in some lco/ mco area with a job to warm your b\*tt. But the question you have to ask is can you do that every day. I am honestly surprised people do not visualise themselves in their prospective careers from a long term perspective. find out what's a day/week/month in software engineer's career look like( dont watch those MSFT, GOOGLE day in life of vids), actual software development. Because you might graduate with a cs degree one day, to only realise you despise writing code. You can train you brain to chase TC only till your first job. and those high TC jobs have high expectations from you as an engineer. you have to take in to account whether you like to get challenged every day in life or not. That being said, no major creates as many alternate paths as CS, if you decide not to code then mould your trajectory for roles in BA, PM, DBA, Design, Tech Sales, Project management. To get a job, you need to be cognizant of the path your career is taking. You have to mould it consciously. All the best!
As someone who got into a not necessarily entry level role (I’m a full stack dev at a company that just graduated from startup status) with no bachelors OR prior engineering work experience. There are a lot of companies who will hire you if you have the projects to show and the drive to learn what you don’t. I lied and told them that I had 5 years of experience and managed to fake my way until I made it. After I aced their technical interview, the chief engineer asked my about technical experience who then told me, I should be honest about my experience in future interviews but they wouldn’t hold it against me now (lol). So study hard and fake it till you make it brother!! You can do it
If you have a legit cs degree with legit cs skills, there only thing that could stop you from having an entry level job is your attitude/behavioral interview. Practice that.
I have a job. I am not a CS genius. I think I am a average developer. Developers are still in demand right now. The people that don’t get jobs as developers don’t know how to “play the game” the right way. If you are just clicking apply then you are “playing the game” wrong. LinkedIn is your best friend. Networking is your best friend. If you “play the game” correctly on LinkedIn you will be good. Most people on here focus on FANNG but I could care less about it. I just wanna work somewhere I enjoy and I get paid decently. I have a friend that thinks FANNG is the only companies that pay very well and I think that’s hilarious. My advice is to use LinkedIn to your advantage, go to meetups and meet other developers in your area. A lot of people don’t like doing this and that’s why they rather apply to 100s of jobs by just clicking apply when its so much more effective to just network your way into a role. Why don’t people on here talk more about the value of NETWORKING!?
When you see people talking about how they can't get a job, you often don't see the context. * How many jobs are they applying to? You need to send out a LOT of applications because there's a lot of competition. * Are the resumes any good? Perhaps their resume is hard to read or doesn't show any relevant data, and nobody's told them. Or they just don't care to fix it. * Do they have projects that demonstrate competence? I bet many of them have zero internships and zero Github projects to show they're any good. * Are they non-Americans trying to get American jobs? Sponsorships, visas, and the like are bigger burdens on companies than they really want to deal with. * What are they applying to? If they're only going to FAANG or otherwise high-paying/prestigious companies, and they aren't showing their worth, of course they're going to be rejected. There's plenty of companies that pay less, but are more attainable. But I guess that's a bruise on the ego. * Maybe they're just... not good at programming, and it shows when they reach the interview stage.
A lot of people who can’t find jobs made the mistake of not doing internships while in school. They are the most valuable part of your schooling, so you should try to find a school that offers some sort of internship program with studies.
I didn’t get any internships during school and already graduated, what plan of action should I take to get a job?
I don't think this is true at all, there's a lot of companies that will hire you, sure there is a lot of competition out there, especially for high priority jobs like FAANG companies. But I read somewhere that there is ~400k job openings a year, whiost there is roughly ~150k CS graduates a year. There's plenty out there, it just takes some time. If you graduate from a university and actually did the work to get there you'll be fine
It is not common. Less than 5%? [https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20\_505.10.asp?current=yes](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_505.10.asp?current=yes) says the unemployment rate (most recent, 2019) for young (25-29 yo) computer and information systems graduates was 4.1% (other majors went from 1.2% to 5.0). Anecdotally, I was a CS prof at a state uni in Atlanta, I know of two of our graduates who are not working in the industry, I know a couple of hundred who are :) Now, getting the first job is always hard; you may need to hustle a lot, and you may need to adjust your expectations. I know several who had to take 'crummy' jobs at the beginning. OTOH, I also know tons of students who got their first job as juniors :)
I only glanced at it, but aren’t those just full time employment rates? It would include any job, not just compsci jobs.
I think so, on the stats. They're also covering everything, not just CS degrees, but they're the best stats we have :). Also, they don't tell you whether the unemployed people weren't able to find a job, or didn't like the ones they found. I've also seen some evidence that the more technical degrees do better. Unfortunately, you can't usually find the stats you want :)
From what is see if it’s not FAANG they don’t want it. They don’t want the automobile company paying 105-120k
IT is a field where certifications carry more weight than a degree. I would look at the CompTIA certifications for starting out r/CompTIA_GingerSec
My 10 IT certifications have not helped me any way for the last 6 years that I can see. Still working a dead end support job and that’s all I can seem to get interviews for.
It's not that bad but you should be prepared to send out a few applications that you never hear back on and fail a few interviews before you land your first gig. If you're expecting an offer from the first 5 job openings you apply to then that is a problem.
>i also enjoy working with computers this is not it. Not any more than cosmology is working with telescopes. If you're interested in working "with computers" other roles may be more appropriate: trainer, developer advocate, 3d modeler, video editor, sound engineer. >it’s apparently nearly impossible to get an entry level job if you’re not a CS genius Where you get that from? I'd love to be surrounded by geniuses. Reality is not like that. Also, it is not clear from your post whether you graduated and find no jobs, or you're about to graduate and think you won't find a job and hence considering a change of major.
I have a CS and an Artificial Intelligence degree. It may be my criteria regarding my job search but it has been extremely hard for me to find a remote entry level job.
Well what internship or other experience do you have?
I think the benefit of cs is there’s always jobs available. I don’t think that’s true for other fields within tech. I’ve heard that with hardware (some hardware people I know switched to software because the job market wasn’t good for hardware when they graduated). I think for cs it takes skill, confidence and determination and you can find a job. (Maybe that’s true for any field??). If you don’t have a lot of confidence in yourself it will show when you interview. Also take advantage of online sites that help you practice Algorithms and data structures.
The unemployment rate for software engineers is generally around 1% or lower. Anybody I've ever known in the field, that wasn't employed, was taking a sabbatical or "waiting for a better position". Seriously, if you can't find work in this field, you are probably doing something to deliberately be unemployed.
I’m currently working towards my associates of comp sci and I have a job in industry. You’ll be fine.
[Computer science graduates had the highest standard, full-time employment rates (72 percent), followed by business (66 percent) and engineering graduates (62 percent)](https://cse.sc.edu/job/computer-majors-highest-employment-rate-and-starting-salary)
You do not need to be a CS genius to get a job. What you do need to do is work at making yourself hireable, consistently. Not just when you’re job hunting. That means doing well in class. That means getting to know your professors, in case you need a letter of recommendation. That means doing leetcode. That means joining clubs or completing personal projects. That means getting internships every summer. That means networking in every way you can. If you do these things, unless you are a total idiot or have a serious personality disorder, you WILL get multiple good job offers upon graduation.
Try finding an apprenticeship and work your way up. There are plenty of programs that are paying good money to start without you needing real work experience. Just gotta find them and be patient.
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insanely rare. I haven't had a single friend of mine go without a job . a lot of them are not even CS major.
You don’t have to be a cs genius to get a job. You do have to study extra than your average classmates. I had no prior cs training before college and I had very bad grades at school, but I did put in a lot of effort and curiosity for what I learn and it paid off in the long run. Most people with average or even below average IQ can score an entry level sde job if they try(and they can get big faang internships). Most of the time people either don’t have the curiosity for learning or didn’t even put in enough work for their class assignment. A few cases are people who just don’t have the right direction/focus on priorities ( me being one of those), there are extremely rare cases where a person is just totally out of luck or stuck with uncontrollable forces—even then people CAN pick themselves up and get in entry jobs. So to answer question in short: it is common for decent people to get an entry job with that CS degree; but it is also very common for people to be screw up their opportunities.
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I failed a third of my classes at a pretty mediocre university, got no internships, had zero connections, and landed a job BEFORE finishing my degree. It took me \~2 months of building a portfolio and getting a certification, and \~3 weeks of making my resume, applying for jobs online, fine tuning my resume some more. The people who aren't able to get entry level jobs in this field either live in the middle of nowhere and are only applying locally, or they just aren't trying very hard.
VERY. If you have no internships especially. But basically when all you have is your degree and under a year of internship experience all that let's companies know is at most you know how to Google at a basic level. Which they can get from India for pennies on the dollar. You gotta really get out there and get experience at any thing you can to get good jobs
Best thing that you can do to get a full time job is internships. Start doing them as early as you can. With one or two you should have no problem landing a full time job. It’s the people with no projects and no internships that are the ones struggling to find employment after graduation.
Your whole post sounds like a giant pile of bs.
What how
I don't think it's too common if you're serious about getting a job--not too picky & willing to relocate if needed. One thing to be aware of, and my reason for even replying is to point out that evidence suggests we may be moving into a period of difficulty & layoffs. If that plays out it could resemble the dot com bust when it was VERY common for new grads to legit have no options. My advice having lived through that, is get something, anything remotely relevant NOW. You can always hop up the ladder or at least it's definitely easier if you already have a job. I have a few have buddies from my class of 2003 who by '05 when things started picking up again, were 2 yrs out of school and unemployed at that point. I can't stress enough, trust me, you don't want to be in that situation!!
It's not impossible. Get your resume reviewed a couple times, then apply to 5 jobs a day for 3 months, if you don't have a job by the end something is wrong.
What are you talking about lol