Is a CS degree a waste of time?

Is a CS degree a waste of time?

I really don't think it is at all but internet fags always try to convince me to just do MOOCs

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It is, though. Learn a craft instead.

If you're a retard you won't make money no matter what you do, if you're smart you don't even need a degree to make money, it's as simple as that.

Why?

I find that hard to believe. If "smart" means "some business-ass nigga" then yeah.

yes

depends on where you get it and if the area needs your skills

If you like it, you'll find a way to make money. Don't do it just because

A counter strike degree is worth the time. I prefer source over go.

"smart" means knowing how to succeed in our western society, which means making money.

Yeah, study plumbing instead. That way you can cover your shit and have back problems by the time your turn 30 AKA succeeding in life.

>get back problems
>receive disability
>retire at 30 and be NEET for the rest of your life
Sounds like a plan.

Right, and a main prerequisite to success is having the necessary education to fill an occupation you desire.

The area doesn't need my skills, but it's a good school. I'm hoping to move to Spain when I'm done.

If you're not a inutile drinking beer faggot CS could do wonders for you. Fuck what those inutile Arch idiots says about it.

I know, right? FUCK UNIVERSITY (even though unemployment is lower and wages are higher for graduates)

nice meme

You can do something you like, or do something that's gonna make you money. If you're lucky those two things might intersect, but I seriously think people should spend the time to try and find something they at least somewhat enjoy. Not being some pie in the sky "follow your dreams" morons, but maybe don't subject yourself to a lifetime of being an engineer if you absolutely hate it.

I transfered from engineering to CS after my second year of mech eng and I'd rather die before going back. I seriously think it's hard to excel at something you're not passionate about at all.

>Why?

As a carpenter, you work with wood and stuff like mdf, decent materials. Also, you have proven, reliable tools. Most of them last an eternity, if you don't go full retard.

As a plumber, you work on shit and hot air. However, tools are a solved problem.

As someone working as something related to computer hardware or software, you will - if you aren't delusional in one way or another - realize that you work on piled up shit. This time however, the tools are also shit, i.e. you touch shit directly. There are fanbois that smear themselves with certain flavors of it. And although all actual problems are solved everything breaks and the pile falls on a lot of people and parts of it need to be replaced every x month for no good reasons.

Yeah, I like computers. Computers made a shit ton of money. Therefore, I should do computers.

Is software engineering a good direction?

see

So what? Isn't that the fun of it? You have the ability to change the way it all works.

>You have the ability to change the way it all works.
No you don't. Nobody has. That would require the ability to rewrite the history.

You can create better software, better programming languages, better libraries, better technologies. Look at web assembly.

Are you going to college either way? Get a CS degree.
Do you need to save money? Get an associates degree in computer science and transfer to a state school for your bachelor's
Are you like 30 and just want a new career? Make projects hit every relevant meetup find a local slack group make connections get a job

25 and already have two bachelor's, so the associates part is pretty irrelevant as I've done all the shit courses already.

I can't really make real projects without an education though. I can do front-end web dev pretty well but that's not even real.

Furthermore I'm going to be a felon on probation for the next 5 years due to possession of marijuana so I need to have a real job / real school, can't just be like "I'm on the internet all day doing projects"

For me it would've been a waste of time/money. All I really wanted to do is be a network/system tech. Not be a IT manager or Project leader,etc. To much stress/paperwork/bullshit involved with those type jobs. So I went and got my A+/Network+ Certifications (2002/2003). Not long after i got on hired by the state. Not in IT but another field. I figured hey, work this job for a while, earn tenure (after 6 months they can't fire you unless you really,really fuck up or state goes bankrupt), then apply for IT job. Life/shit happened at work. Got moved into another career field. 10+ yrs later still in said career. All IT jobs I want were/are being farmed out to outside consultants (cheaper on state that way). Only state IT jobs are high manager types which I don't want to be. I could quit, get hired as a consultant but I'd lose 10+ yrs of built up retirement benefits so I'd be working an extra 10+ yrs. Right now I can retire after 28 yrs service with full benefits/paid medical/ & 401K

You have two bachelor's degrees but you're incapable of self learning?

You're already fucked pothead. Get a job with one of your apparently worthless degrees and stop trying to reinvent yourself.

When did I say I'm incapable of self-learning? I taught myself conversational Mandarin in less than four months, dummy.

I'm not a pothead at all, dummy. How can I simultaneously get a job, and have a "worthless" degree, dummy? Who said I'm trying to "reinvent" myself, dummy? I was self-studying CS before the arrest

>has two bachelor's degrees
>wants a third
>not getting masters

You're a fucking moron.

A CS degree will open doors to top paying companies like Facebook and Google, that offer 150k+ to new grads. You won't even get a human to look at your resume without connections or a degree.

OP is a convicted felon and couldn't make his last two degrees work. OP is not getting past any recruiter's desk.

How the fuck am I supposed to know that? I'm not going to read the whole fucking thread before replying.

porn of her/him?

You're telling me they won't hire me over a marijuana charge? The "couldn't make the other degrees work" part is just absurd, a linguistics degree doesn't prepare you to program.

You're a felon, retard. You're breaking rocks for the next decade.

Hey asshole, I'm looking at a combined BS/MS in CS so fuk u

Decade? What are you saying? You're one of those never-left-their-mom's-house type, aren't you? You certainly don't seem to know anything about the world.

The engineering staff will value you for your knowledge. The problem is that in most large firms, HR gets first whack at candidates and will immediately remove people without a degree.

It's definitely possible to get a job without a degree just using your Github portfolio (I did it), but it's much harder to get your foot in the door.
I'm finishing my degree now because I'm worried that if something happened to my position I wouldn't be able to find a job without a piece of paper, even with multiple years of professional experience.

8.6% of the country has felony convictions... not the end of the world

Might as well be black

A CS major is a solid choice, but make sure that the program you choose doesn't skip out on too many of the social science courses. Some of the colleges around my area are loosening their requirements a bit so students can fit more programming courses in their four years there.

>inb4 libturd arts/social science is fake news
Story time.
>be me
>go to hackathon at University of Washington in Seattle
>talk to some of the visiting students about tech
>"Uber is the best app ever guise xD"
>ask them about software ethics
>"Wtf is that, I just wanna #disrupt"
>ask them about their courses
>learn that they somehow skipped the social science courses
>"Lmfao f.a.m we don't need those when we can learn #AI xDDDD"
Take your social science courses. They help you connect the CS theory to the larger scope of things so you realize when throwing technology at a problem isn't necessarily going to solve it.

This is what I've found in my experience, hence the OP. I find that most of the better jobs in my area, if not all of them, require a bachelor's in CS. I've only got an interview (or a call back for that matter) from one startup that didn't require a degree.

Thanks for the advice. I'm already #based on social sciences though -- I have an anthropology degree and read philosophy and history all day. Mainly getting into CS because of the implications of information security and because NLP is so interesting.

>if you're smart you don't even need a degree to make money

>implying meritocracy is still a thing
>implying meritocracy was ever a thing

Hahaha

>You have two bachelor's degrees but you're incapable of self learning?

>implying the self-learning resources online are not scattered as fuck

Look up thenewboston on YouTube. He has 15+ tutorial series on everything from basic Java to mobile development.

Also consider studying Apache Cordova.

Anyone have any tips for a student seeking a CS degree with a focus in networking? What sort of programs should I focus on to get myself prepared for a career in network security?

>25 and already have two bachelor's, so the associates part is pretty irrelevant as I've done all the shit courses already.

>What sort of programs should I focus on to get myself prepared for a career in network security?
Nothing in Computer Science.
You're looking for Information Systems, sometimes called Information Science.

I don't know, at my university these are housed in the CS courselist, while Information Science is just a euphemism for librarians that have heard of computers.

It depends. I dropped out in junior year after I got a hired as a full time programmer. At this point if I got fired and had to look for a new job it would possibly be a hassle without a degree but my experience makes up for it. A degree is more useful for getting in the door but after you have experience it matters less and less. Depending on how large your company is, nor having a degree can prevent you from moving to management but if you work for a /comfy/ small company like me it doesn't matter at all.

If you go to a world-class school (AKA you've heard of it before), a CS degree is fine.

>Is a CS degree a waste of time?
if you have to ask, then it probably is. to really succeed in software development you need to be very enthusiastic about what you're doing. if you just go through the motions then a degree by itself won't make your life great. a degree can help get a foot in the door but you need to know your shit and you will need to self-study even if you go to university because they only teach you the most basic things and at a slow pace.

>HR gets first whack at candidates and will immediately remove people without a degree.
Not only that, but HR uses software now called Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). The ATS allows them to filter resumes based on things such as college attended, current location, etc. It's a rather old idea (used in the 1980s with little success) that got back into the light thanks to a few startups (Dice and Indeed mostly). Unless you're a knockout candidate (high GPA from a university with a huge marketing department), you're not getting past the ATS.

So how do you get a job then? I've been reading some articles on this topic lately. This one seems the most relevant. I haven't tried it myself yet because I'm waiting on the results of an online coding screen.

forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2017/02/02/online-job-applications-dont-work-try-a-pain-letter-instead/#530383e2a00e

Good luck OP! There's a lot of HR bullshit lately, so try to find ways into a company that don't involve HR.

>is a convicted felon

isnt this what freelancing is for? rapists and degenerates working from home, win-win.

jesus christ you don't need a third degree, your first two will be fine, but it really sounds like you aren't cut out to be a programmer. even if you go through school, as a programmer you will need to figure out things on your own.

>I wouldn't be able to find a job without a piece of paper, even with multiple years of professional experience.

I still have not been able to find a full time position for this reason.
After a year of internships, I'm still baffled at how these companies can put up ads for entry level positions with a requirement of 5 or more years of professional experience in several specific languages.
Who the fuck would ever need that much experience? I learned C# and SQL from nothing to professionally competent in just a single 6 month internship.

I was told so many fucking times "They're always looking for programmers" and "Experience is more important to an employer."
If this is all true, then how the fuck are they filling these positions? it's honestly blowing my mind.

Not sure what you're making your assumptions based on, but I'm great at that. I wouldn't have graduated top of my class if I didn't do a shit ton of self-study outside of course requirements.

Are you conflating a rapist with someone who was found guilty of possessing marijuana?

>I can't really make real projects without an education
>I need to have a real job / real school, can't just be like "I'm on the internet all day doing projects"

The first is because I'm sick of programming javascript for websites. I want to make some next-level translation technology.
The second is a misunderstanding on your part. While I'm on probation for the next five years, it's a requirement that I have a job or go to school. I'm not allowed to just say "I'm learning it on my own".

Reddit consistently shits on thenewboston

ah ok so you need to go to school or get a job or something. idk try to get a job and learn it on the side?
>I want to make some next-level translation technology.
this is way too hard and requires resources which you don't have. it's almost like coming up with artificial intelligence. even google can't do it all that well.

>I learned C# and SQL from nothing to professionally competent in just a single 6 month internship.

I pity the people who have to deal with your pajeet-level, "professionally competent" code.

>this is way too hard and requires resources which you don't have.
Exactly my point, playa! That's why I want to get a bachelor's in CS, then get my Master's in Computational Linguistics / Natural Language Technology at Edinburgh (the only school in the world besides UWashington that offers such a degree).

I'm sure you have alot more respect for the ones who still make pajeet-level, "professionally competent" code after 3 years with a CS degree.

this is like getting into biology because you want a pet tyrannosaurus rex

probably not going to happen

CS degree from your school isn't worth it unless you take a bunch of math classes.

I fail to see how that analogy is accurate. It'd be more along the lines of wanting to [do whatever biologists do]

There would be a significantly higher chance, yes. Especially if I saw that they weren't doing C# at a shitty web dev company or if they had an honors project that was based on an interesting idea or in an area that's related to what my business does - even if it wasn't expertly programmed.

Hell, if I saw those two things I would even be tempted to think that their code might not be pajeet-level at all and that that person might be worth interviewing.

it's EXTREMELY difficult, with emphasis on EXTREME, to get a computer to translate natural language, especially if you want it to be as good as or better than google translate

pic related

...

tfw I've tried learning a few programming languages, but I just can't get the more advanced stuff.

Once I do a tutorial or two I don't know where to go from there. I tried finding a project I would want to do, but idek know where to start and they seem to require a bunch of other things that I don't know.

I can only do the very basic in a few languages now. I can't create programs from scratch.

What if his two bachelors were in linguistics and language translation?

Name of him?
Jewgle doesn't help.

then with the CS degree he could maybe apply for a job at google to work on google translate or at apple to work on siri or something. or something that's unrelated to his specialty because there probably aren't that many companies that are in the business of machine translation. doing his own startup with some revolutionary new algorithm is unrealistic.

You dense motherfucker.

I was trying to drive the point that you don't need 5 fucking years of professional experience to be an expert in a language.
I've been programming front end user interfaces for custom SQL queries I've made based on the client's demands for a little more than a year.
It doesn't sound extremely impressive, but I think I think I'm at least worth a Junior Developer position S O M E W H E R E, but no one will even take a glance at my shit because I don't yet have a piece of paper from an educational institution that everyone still tells me is worthless anyway.

If the HR practices I've heard are true, then nothing of mine would even land on your desk, so you pretty much unknowingly proved my point.

Bitch looks like a caravan guard from New Vegas

>Jewgle doesn't help.
Yeah it does
dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3675585/Jaden-Smith-17-cuddles-girlfriend-Sarah-Snyder-21-dinner-date-LA.html

So you're fucking up, you know you're fucking up, you know that people are giving you shitty advice, and yet you continue choosing to fuck up by listening to that advice, and you know that your experience isn't good and that you won't get good experience until you stop fucking up.

Is your point here to tell everybody how much of a fuck up you are, so that they can continue giving you shitty advice, and then you can continue to choose to fuck up by taking it?

Have a good day, dude.

>You have the ability to change the way it all works.

Hahahaha ! Do come back and revisit what you think once you had enough shoveling shit in any position for large IT corporations.

Funny you say that, because they are

Holy shit did you respond to my post on accident?

>I have experience in certain languages and how to adapt to different ones
>I'm applying everywhere with an appropriate resume and portfolio reviewed by colleagues, professors, coworkers, and internship employers
>Even applying to the most basic of positions in the field
>Not getting any calls back

>"Lol, it's cause you're making shitty decisions because of shitty advice."

Am I supposed to just go into any office I want and just scream "HIRE ME!" and shit on the employer's desk because it's the one piece of advice I wasn't given?

Karlie the Koder?

I'm Jewish.

I'm about to take a course on software development. It's suppose to take 15 weeks to kickstart me into the field of tech. I'm only 19...
Will employers take me seriously with a certification or do I take the course, do an internship, and hope for the best. I'm also interested in a MBA from NYU as well. Tech and Finance are my passions. I just want another view point from you anons out there

>Will employers take me seriously with a certification or do I take the course

They only see money, they seriously wants money. You're just the smallest gear in the whole machine, replaceable.

They will hire you for sure, but if you expect them to take your ideas seriously ? Don't.

Harvard, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, or Rice for CS, Sup Forums?

Does she have ghost nipples or is she wearing a shirt the same color as her skin?

>MIT
>Carnegie Mellon

The rest belong in the trash.

>If you're a retard you won't make money no matter what you do, if you're smart you don't even need a degree to make money, it's as simple as that.

Can confirm.

The other day i had a pre-interview with a Master's in HR, a BS in CS, and a BS in Materials Science that went on to get an MS in CS.

CS is lucrative, you just have to look for government/security work if you're white

Any suggestions? anything will be helpful user

>even though unemployment is lower and wages are higher for graduates

Grads r a meme - that 'extra pay' is a small percentage, at best, in your twenties, maybe.

It's all about the interview and what have you done in the real world - thats the money.

Degrees r a total meme, unless you desperately want to learn some academic shit.

Do financial engineering or some shit. aka writing financial simulations for financial managers

Those positions you're finding are tech companies who post bogus positions that are literally impossible to fill, and no self-respecting person who meets those requirements would accept their garbage pay.

Once no one applies for their garbage, bogus position, they're now legally entitled to apply for H-1B applicants who they can pay shit and kick out of the country any time they want.

Those companies you see doing that? You don't want to work for them.

Failing high school, you're supposed to learn critical thinking skills in college. If you don't know how to teach yourself things by the time you graduated, you're either mentally disabled or you were cheated out of your money.

Holy shit, finally a constructive answer.
Also that's very interesting, cause I knew alot of people that had issues with the H1-B program but I never gave it enough mind to ask them about it.

>All these retards telling you to get a trade job
>on Sup Forums

When did retarded Sup Forumstards from the rust belt take over this little garden of civilization?

It's a skin-colored fabric with black lines printed on.

I don't think you have any idea how much of a vacuum in the trades there's going to be once all of the boomers retire.
Behind software developers, blue collar workers are going to be working with legacy systems the most.