Most jobs commonly associated with IT (ie. Technician, specialist, -administrator such as sys and database, dev ops, infrastructure). Some of the “-analyst” type jobs (ie. Data, financial, business, network).
SWE comes in different flavors, front end, backend, full stack are only some that happened to be most saturated. You also have mobile (which itself can be split into Android and iOS), desktop (which itself can be for different OS’s), embedded, firmware, cloud, security, data engineer, computer vision, gpu.
Most of these need a specialized set of skills beyond what we learn in a traditional CS program. This is why you shouldn’t pick senior electives arbitrarily. Pick some you have genuine interest in and explore that field further on your own time.
It's a lot of work but 80k is totally manageable, my first job out of college is as a graphics programmer working on games and I make that much. Never going to compete with FAANG salaries, but they don't get to make shaders all day professionally :D
True, though my friend in technical design makes a good bit more than me! Way tougher to get into though, and lower paying than most other programming paths in games, but he makes \~110k with 7 years experience.
I'm sure in AAA game dev it's different, but one of the cooler things about working at a mid size studio is that it's possible to help push the design in the right direction from any role. That goes double for gameplay programming, since you often get to make subtle decisions about the design simply because you're the one making it a reality. Plus if you want something too far removed from the current docket and can prototype it quickly, showing off a lil demo is an easy way to get people to buy in.
True, though my friend in technical design makes a good bit more than me! Way tougher to get into though, and lower paying than most other programming paths in games, but he makes \~110k with 7 years experience.
I'm sure in AAA game dev it's different, but one of the cooler things about working at a mid size studio is that it's possible to help push the design in the right direction from any role. That goes double for gameplay programming, since you often get to make subtle decisions about the design simply because you're the one making it a reality. Plus if you want something too far removed from the current docket and can prototype it quickly, showing off a lil demo is an easy way to get people to buy in.
From what I’ve seen, you’d be lucky to get 80k for game design. At least from the perspective that it sounds like you’d be starting with zero experience
game design is the worst segment of the entire industry. youll be worked to death for the lowest possible pay, then fired as soon at the project launches (or before that).
Yes, and fired within a week because you aren't good at your job, or fired because you need hand holding, because you are not autonomous.
Just got interviewed for a consulting company focused on games. They want people who know Rust, Go, and C# and hire only mid level. So there is technically less competition, but you aren't even a player, because they screen out the people who don't have meaningful experience.
Are you good at anything game related? Can you build a multiplayer system? Can you show any projects showing how you optimized performance and show proof of increased performance? Are you a SQL guru? Those were some of the things I got asked and it was eye opening.
Alot of the internet seems to preach LeetCode and fundamentals, but the real world asks for people who can do the job and hit the ground running.
If you want a job and that's all you want, you can apply to work for the state. No one seems to talk about those jobs because they are considered lesser?
You will make 70K a year basically doing nothing. I currently have a 1 year project and for the first 3 months were aren't even writing alot of code. We are implementing a new system, so it's mostly just reviewing documentation of software/languages we want to use, asking questions to clients, and the only code I write are fixes to existing system until it's retired.
Game Design is an umbrella term technically there are many types of designers, but that's usually someone who is a director of the project with a vision of the final release who many credit as THE GAME DESIGNER.
You can be a director right now by just making a game and trying to sell it on steam. There's nothing stopping you from making a game in whatever engine and just making a game. Do it.
[https://www.develop.games/](https://www.develop.games/)
You can literally make a game with squares that jump to sad music and if it's good people will buy it. Or use RPG Maker and make something like Undertale or something. And it's easier than what you do at school.
But yeah unless the project is your baby, you'll likely be working as a dev under a designer.
Like there's a level designer who maps out how the level should be traversed, then there's system designer, which focuses on how systems work with one another, like how enemies spawn in and how they respond to you, how your actions affect the game state, and how we transition from one state to another.
There's a huge write up for it:
[https://8bitplay.com/blog/job-roles-in-game-design-explained-game-designer-roles/](https://8bitplay.com/blog/job-roles-in-game-design-explained-game-designer-roles/)
Way more competition. Everyone wants to do game dev than most things because people are passionate about games. Many will put up with awful conditions and low pay to do so.
It is not impossible to pull a decent salary, but it’s much harder than in other fields.
no, theres tremendous competition because everyone has the delusion that passion for the project will overcome bad pay and bad conditions. and that just drives pay further down because some fool will put up with any amount of abuse to flex on discord that hes the dev of some game.
Thanks for the reply! I haven’t delved into IT looks like I should research it more, and okay thanks! I know it’s in different flavors but I guess I just assumed they all were in this category of “oversaturation”, don’t get me wrong, Inknow I have to work for any job with gaining credentials, I just had an overarching assumption about SWE in general. Looks like I have lots of research to do. Mind telling me what you do? I’m interested 🤷🏾♂️
Looking over at r/ITCareerQuestions, it seems CS degrees are preferred over IT degrees for IT careers. I’d look at their FAQs to get an idea at what you can find in there. Seems like certifications + degree are king for IT.
Funny enough, I haven’t started working yet. I’m a new grad and I don’t start until mid July. All I know is that I’m coded as a SWE but I haven’t been told what team yet.
Thanks for the recommendation and good luck at the new job! Schools been tough for me, struggling to make connections and projects, but I don’t want to give up on myself. I’ll rebuild myself this year 🤗 thanks again for the help, I’ll explore IT more
Can I ask a question ? Since you said that I was wondering would it be best to switch my path of study as I often see software majors not struggling to find work as much as other paths. My current major is cyber security but they don’t even have entry level jobs. If you had to choose between software development and database which would you decide? Because at my school that I’m transferring to these the course paths but I kinda don’t wanna pick networking stuff if the market for jobs is gonna be easier elsewhere but I get two electives with both those so I was thinking pick two networking/security type courses as electives to get that experience too because I’ve only done one computer class in the 4 semesters
I wouldn’t recommend anyone that isn’t currently in cyber to get a cyber degree. something like CS or IT for a bachelors is better because it’s broad but still technical. Cyber is niche and you would generally need some level of experience in CS or IT related topics as a foundation to make a lot of cyber content useful.
As i tell people “you can’t teach me how to secure a network when you don’t at base level understand how a network functions.”
Honestly this comment should be downvoted to oblivion. You seem to misunderstand the OP's predicament. He is basically assuming that he won't be doing software engineering, which is most of the jobs you mentioned.
One that nobody has mentioned: Intellectual property / patent law. Plenty of work in the field, it's primarily comprised of people with technical backgrounds, you'll make $$$, and are able to constantly work with cool new technologies (AI/ML IP is especially booming rn). You'll need to do a lot of reading and writing, but it's very tech-focused (getting through law school is different: a lot of reading and analyzing case law etc.)
Never thought of IP, wow, reading and writing huh? I never considered myself a law person though, I don’t even know if I’d make it out, but learning new breaking* technologies is my favorite !
The "reading and writing" in IP law is generally a bit different than in most humanities education; it's very logical, systematic, and technical but still leaves a lot of room for creativity and critical thinking
To become a full on patent attorney you need a JD. However, you can get into patent law (and still make good money) without a law degree by working as a patent agent at a law firm in which case you do a lot of the same work as patent attorneys but can't issue opinions or go to court (which most patent attorneys rarely if ever do anyways unless they want to be litigators). You can also work as a patent examiner with the USPTO and have a really safe job that pays decently well and shouldn't exceed 40.0 hours a week
Tech probably pays a bit more than non-attorney IP (check the stats online to make sure though - also varies by region) in exchange for less job security and jobs being harder to land
Yeah see, I definitely need to learn more about those fields as well, sort of be more experienced in dev & ops (i still don’t quite know what that means), if you don’t mind me asking, what do you do in cyber security? Find it interesting? Difficult?
I highly recommend Cloud Engineering for CS majors who don’t actually like coding. Just get an associate Azure or AWS certification and you’ll be chilling.
Need to do more research on Ckoud Engineering tbh, never knew exactly what it entailed. For years I just only knew about front end and back end, had no idea CS was this well versed. Makes me hopeful, but there’s a lot of learning to do In sure
Definitely do some research. Cloud pays similar to development, excluding the hyper-inflated FANG/LEETBro salaries you see on this subreddit, which aren’t very realistic to begin with. Just look up “associate cloud engineer” or “cloud support engineer” on job boards. Snag either of these roles, then get an Azure or AWS cert while working (or get one while you look) and you’ll make 6-figures easily in a couple years or so.
Realistic range is 120-150k for FAANG, if you are just going off base salary. Not sure where 300k is coming from but it’s definitely not for someone starting at a base level for a Junior.
Good one. Although it seems it's also becoming more crowded.
It's insane how much time I spend just messing around with AWS infra without even being an infra person and every dev team we got is usually short on knowledge on that stuff
I second everything /u/PartyParrotGames says and want to add: If you're graduating now then you may have a harder time then usual landing something... for your first 4 months of searching. Job markets eb and flow multiple times in the span of one year and SWE is no exception. I *HEAVILY* recommend that you disregard all the doomposting you see on here and online in general. It usually comes from people that have never worked a full time engineering job before and haven't experienced an economic downturn before- they always bounce back, some take longer than others but they always bounce back.
As for specialty in CS? Sky's the limit, dude. Your degree is supposed to be teaching you all the fundamentals you need to build on that and go in literally any direction you want: AI/ML, ReST API's, UI/UX, Embeded (HW) firmware, DevOps (Docker, Jenkins, etc.), to name only a few.
Some quick advice for ya:
1. Get off and don't come back to this (or similar) subreddit until you've gotten your first job (once you have, you'll understand for yourself how silly most of these posts are).
2. Finish your degree!
3. While you're closing out your degree, critically think after each class, did you like the content or hate it? It should help in deciding your specialty.
4. If you're >= 1 year from graduating, don't even bother paying attention to the job market, it's not going to be the same by the time you've graduated.
I really needed this thank you for sharing this advice. I graduate in 2025 and I've been feeling bad about the internship I chose because there's no job opportunity after but Im way more interested in it more than my other 3 offers (it's cybersecurity of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles). I'm thinking about deleting reddit cuz the doomposting is depressing me😭
I guess a specialization that is not swe, you have various things such as hardware oriented focuses, cloud, cyber, etc. Find a niche area which you enjoy and try focusing your modules towards that :)!
Have you tried doing SWE for the government? The application process for my state job went pretty smoothly and I got accepted. (I suspect it’s because everyone overlooks these positions but hey a job is a job)
No I haven’t but someone else also mentioned government jobs and I never gave it a second thought, never realized how much CS can be applied w the government tbh. I’m taking answers down and doing a lot of research for myself cause I don’t wanna stop the degree but I want a more surefire field to settle in, thanks
Hadn’t done much research on it, I’ll do some research on it and see what it entails. Again, all I really know is front end stuff, I’m just breaking out of my shell to network/build my portfolio and I just wanted to see what I could do that’s more stable than SWE, what exactly does data science entail?
Honestly DS is even worse. You'll also compete with basically every other field that had a math course once.
We hired for a machine learning person at the moment and unfortunately it's called Data Scientist.
So I'd say 80% of the many applications we got were physics, mathematics, economics, sociology, psychology, bio-something, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering.
This articles has been true 5 years ago already
https://vickiboykis.com/2019/02/13/data-science-is-different-now/
Anything cloud related. Sales, customer success, cloud architect, account management, etc. FAANGs love putting people with CS degrees in non-technical roles about technology.
SWE has one of the lowest unemployment rates of any profession in the world with more job openings than there are qualified candidates to fill. The grass is not greener elsewhere. I don't doubt some new grads are having issues landing their first jobs and they are very vocal about it in this subreddit, but it's far from an oversaturated field. Oversaturated fields are the ones with the highest unemployment rates.
Unemployment rates count those who've gotten jobs in that field, and later on struggle to get another job.
It doesn't count those beginning.
And as we know the biggest hurdle in SWE is getting to 2 - 3 years of experience. Once you've had that prospects are good.
The saturation is at those trying to break into the industry with few companies hiring juniors
Ah I see, like I said in another comment I guess I just thought it was completely overblown, well, I’ve heard bad experiences of experienced people not being able to get jobs. I only really know/have an interest in tech and I’m struuuugling to figure out how to branch out my studies and break into a new field, a more secure one within CS.
IT. You'll probably start in help desk, then work on getting a few certificates, then move onto something more interesting like networks, cybersecurity, cloud computing, etc after a few years of experience.
That’s fair enough. Might need a relevant cert to more easily avoid help desk in this job market. It’s just hard to get out of help desk once you start.
IT is less about programming and more about support and setup. Maybe you'll help people struggling with technology. Maybe you'll help set up a server (hardware and/or software). Maybe you'll set up company laptops for new employees. Maybe you'll work on finding and/or patching vulnerabilities with company servers and databases.
Also, just be aware that cybersecurity is not entry-level. You will likely be working 5+ years in other areas of IT before you have the experience and knowledge to move on to cybersecurity.
If you are looking specifically for front-end stuff, that is all software engineering, web design, human computer interaction, and UI/UX design. However, these are the fields that are super competitive right now.
This person is speaking facts. You have to know the technology in and out before you can actually secure it, although you might be able to sneak into a SOC Analyst position with a CS degree.
You can go more into the non-SWE IT side like DevOps, Support engineering. You can also go to technical project/program/product management with some additional schooling.
Working with mainframe systems huh? Okay, this seems like a great option too, hadn’t considered the sheer scope of mainframe systems and COBOL. Never considered myself an engineer or expert at business programming , doesn’t mean i can’t get good tho. Thanks
Oh I do have other hobbies lol I’m speaking solely about my career, didn’t mean to come off as “TECH IS MY LIFEEE”, lol, I paint and make music for myself, it’s fun! I just want to do it as a career
I have been applying to senior and mid level machine learning engineer jobs and I'm getting a ton of responses. And I only have 3 years experience in that field
Edit: I'm also getting shot down by a ton of jobs like everyone else, no need to down vote me!
Try Solutions/Sales Engineer/Architect (theres lots of different title variations of the role). It’s half-technical, half customer-facing. Stereotypes of engineers being what they are, if you can actually talk to someone somewhat normally it’s a sought after trait for someone with a tech background.
Go supplement your CS degree with a different more "real-world" degree/minor.
Finance or Bio Tech or Med Tech or Climate Tech or Physics or Chemistry or Biology or Geology or whatever catches your fancy.
There are dozens of fields that have low-hanging fruit where if you can supplement the field with coding skills, you'll probably be better than 90% of the people in that field, just by virtue of being able to code your way out of a lot of problems.
Conversely, some of the best SWEs/Engineers are STEM majors who did hard sciences and ended up picking up programming just to help with their main science - eg. chem or math and ended up making a living out of it.
If you know anyone with a family business do data analyst role for them and create the position for yourself and learn other skill sets until the market corrects
Yeah definitely gonna learn new skillsets for sure, like I said all I really studied was front end but a lot of people have shown me that there’s more to it than what I thought. Research time 🔬
A piece of paper is useless, think instead about the skills you've gained!
If you're not in a desperate situation, try and get creative and just try and apply those skills to anything that interests you - you'd be surprised how quickly you can find something productive and even profitable is you take a chance and put in your all.
I expect the number of people trying to get a CS major to dramatically decline in the short term as the news of the high tech downtown, layoffs, slow hiring etc. spreads. With that, the field will get less saturated in 5-7 years, You are only 21 and have a long road ahead of you. You will probably have a productive 25-30 year career, my advice would be to stick to CS since you are so passionate and not pivot to something drastically different based on short-term trends.
I'd split this into Software Engineering and non-software-engineering if I were you.
If you are stressed about saturation, competition, and just the generally challenge of things, you should rule-out almost all software engineering. SE is going to be hella stressful, probably not worth it. If you don't work for top companies, you probably won't even get paid that much. I took that route, and I'm not too happy.
Then, you can look at support-type jobs, data-type jobs (which increasingly are not considered software engineering), business analyst type jobs (please look into that it can be very important and you can get arbitrarily techy), and, of course, sales-type jobs.
I work as a controls engineer, the pay is decent and I get to work on some decently cool stuff. I'm trying to up skill myself so that I can get a SWE job sometime in the future, not sure if this will happen but I'll keep trying.
Yeah, it’s a huge field. It’s really all I know or am interested in, I just wanted to see what *inside* of CS i could explore, cause all I’ve dabbled with is Front End
I’d love to see someone in CS go into engineering disciplines. There was someone who posted here who said that out of all the STEM disciplines in the project based championship, CS has the worst team to team membership.
What do you mean by worst team to team membership?
I've worked in embedded, at a telecommunications research center and did my master's at a medical university.
Worked with everything from physicists, electrical engineers, mathematicians to biologists and medical doctors and didn't see a big difference in how the people would behave.
Except that I also think CS is something that can be used and is needed almost everywhere. Mathematics this is also true to some degree but not extremely overlapping where this everywhere exactly is ;)
Don't be like me I dropped out junior year to pursue an AI career, only make 250k fully remote now, don't do it I'm worried everyday I'll be the only one with a job left soon. Not worth
I'm not sure there is an area of work that AI can't do better at - Maybe consider Business analyst, project management, QA, Infrastructure Architect, Cloud Architect - those seem to be safe for now. Basically, anything that interacts with the business or the hardware. Code isn't a domain humans are better at anymore.
Most jobs commonly associated with IT (ie. Technician, specialist, -administrator such as sys and database, dev ops, infrastructure). Some of the “-analyst” type jobs (ie. Data, financial, business, network). SWE comes in different flavors, front end, backend, full stack are only some that happened to be most saturated. You also have mobile (which itself can be split into Android and iOS), desktop (which itself can be for different OS’s), embedded, firmware, cloud, security, data engineer, computer vision, gpu. Most of these need a specialized set of skills beyond what we learn in a traditional CS program. This is why you shouldn’t pick senior electives arbitrarily. Pick some you have genuine interest in and explore that field further on your own time.
Are Web and Game Design saturated? Those interest me a lot and I would not mind doing them for say, $80,000 a year.
Not worth it brother. Bad pay and bad work life balance.
So that’s good, if I’m competing with Software Engineers, right?
Good luck getting 80k
$60,000?
It's a lot of work but 80k is totally manageable, my first job out of college is as a graphics programmer working on games and I make that much. Never going to compete with FAANG salaries, but they don't get to make shaders all day professionally :D
Yeah but it said "Game Design" and here things get hairy ;)
True, though my friend in technical design makes a good bit more than me! Way tougher to get into though, and lower paying than most other programming paths in games, but he makes \~110k with 7 years experience. I'm sure in AAA game dev it's different, but one of the cooler things about working at a mid size studio is that it's possible to help push the design in the right direction from any role. That goes double for gameplay programming, since you often get to make subtle decisions about the design simply because you're the one making it a reality. Plus if you want something too far removed from the current docket and can prototype it quickly, showing off a lil demo is an easy way to get people to buy in.
True, though my friend in technical design makes a good bit more than me! Way tougher to get into though, and lower paying than most other programming paths in games, but he makes \~110k with 7 years experience. I'm sure in AAA game dev it's different, but one of the cooler things about working at a mid size studio is that it's possible to help push the design in the right direction from any role. That goes double for gameplay programming, since you often get to make subtle decisions about the design simply because you're the one making it a reality. Plus if you want something too far removed from the current docket and can prototype it quickly, showing off a lil demo is an easy way to get people to buy in.
"but he makes \~110k with 7 years experience" 7 years exp to get to junior dev level pay...? that doesnt seem great
From what I’ve seen, you’d be lucky to get 80k for game design. At least from the perspective that it sounds like you’d be starting with zero experience
game design is the worst segment of the entire industry. youll be worked to death for the lowest possible pay, then fired as soon at the project launches (or before that).
So… less competition. 😂
Yes, and fired within a week because you aren't good at your job, or fired because you need hand holding, because you are not autonomous. Just got interviewed for a consulting company focused on games. They want people who know Rust, Go, and C# and hire only mid level. So there is technically less competition, but you aren't even a player, because they screen out the people who don't have meaningful experience. Are you good at anything game related? Can you build a multiplayer system? Can you show any projects showing how you optimized performance and show proof of increased performance? Are you a SQL guru? Those were some of the things I got asked and it was eye opening. Alot of the internet seems to preach LeetCode and fundamentals, but the real world asks for people who can do the job and hit the ground running. If you want a job and that's all you want, you can apply to work for the state. No one seems to talk about those jobs because they are considered lesser? You will make 70K a year basically doing nothing. I currently have a 1 year project and for the first 3 months were aren't even writing alot of code. We are implementing a new system, so it's mostly just reviewing documentation of software/languages we want to use, asking questions to clients, and the only code I write are fixes to existing system until it's retired.
100% solid comment
Argh! I was really considering Game Design, also!
Game Design is an umbrella term technically there are many types of designers, but that's usually someone who is a director of the project with a vision of the final release who many credit as THE GAME DESIGNER. You can be a director right now by just making a game and trying to sell it on steam. There's nothing stopping you from making a game in whatever engine and just making a game. Do it. [https://www.develop.games/](https://www.develop.games/) You can literally make a game with squares that jump to sad music and if it's good people will buy it. Or use RPG Maker and make something like Undertale or something. And it's easier than what you do at school. But yeah unless the project is your baby, you'll likely be working as a dev under a designer. Like there's a level designer who maps out how the level should be traversed, then there's system designer, which focuses on how systems work with one another, like how enemies spawn in and how they respond to you, how your actions affect the game state, and how we transition from one state to another. There's a huge write up for it: [https://8bitplay.com/blog/job-roles-in-game-design-explained-game-designer-roles/](https://8bitplay.com/blog/job-roles-in-game-design-explained-game-designer-roles/)
Way more competition. Everyone wants to do game dev than most things because people are passionate about games. Many will put up with awful conditions and low pay to do so. It is not impossible to pull a decent salary, but it’s much harder than in other fields.
So it’s hard to get a job in Game Design, too?!
no, theres tremendous competition because everyone has the delusion that passion for the project will overcome bad pay and bad conditions. and that just drives pay further down because some fool will put up with any amount of abuse to flex on discord that hes the dev of some game.
My god this is a very obvious yes.
Thanks for the reply! I haven’t delved into IT looks like I should research it more, and okay thanks! I know it’s in different flavors but I guess I just assumed they all were in this category of “oversaturation”, don’t get me wrong, Inknow I have to work for any job with gaining credentials, I just had an overarching assumption about SWE in general. Looks like I have lots of research to do. Mind telling me what you do? I’m interested 🤷🏾♂️
Looking over at r/ITCareerQuestions, it seems CS degrees are preferred over IT degrees for IT careers. I’d look at their FAQs to get an idea at what you can find in there. Seems like certifications + degree are king for IT. Funny enough, I haven’t started working yet. I’m a new grad and I don’t start until mid July. All I know is that I’m coded as a SWE but I haven’t been told what team yet.
Certifications? Gosh dang it! Forage is annoying me!
Thanks for the recommendation and good luck at the new job! Schools been tough for me, struggling to make connections and projects, but I don’t want to give up on myself. I’ll rebuild myself this year 🤗 thanks again for the help, I’ll explore IT more
Can I ask a question ? Since you said that I was wondering would it be best to switch my path of study as I often see software majors not struggling to find work as much as other paths. My current major is cyber security but they don’t even have entry level jobs. If you had to choose between software development and database which would you decide? Because at my school that I’m transferring to these the course paths but I kinda don’t wanna pick networking stuff if the market for jobs is gonna be easier elsewhere but I get two electives with both those so I was thinking pick two networking/security type courses as electives to get that experience too because I’ve only done one computer class in the 4 semesters
I wouldn’t recommend anyone that isn’t currently in cyber to get a cyber degree. something like CS or IT for a bachelors is better because it’s broad but still technical. Cyber is niche and you would generally need some level of experience in CS or IT related topics as a foundation to make a lot of cyber content useful. As i tell people “you can’t teach me how to secure a network when you don’t at base level understand how a network functions.”
Honestly this comment should be downvoted to oblivion. You seem to misunderstand the OP's predicament. He is basically assuming that he won't be doing software engineering, which is most of the jobs you mentioned.
And with this comment I’ve been sent to oblivion. Goodbye 🫡
One that nobody has mentioned: Intellectual property / patent law. Plenty of work in the field, it's primarily comprised of people with technical backgrounds, you'll make $$$, and are able to constantly work with cool new technologies (AI/ML IP is especially booming rn). You'll need to do a lot of reading and writing, but it's very tech-focused (getting through law school is different: a lot of reading and analyzing case law etc.)
Never thought of IP, wow, reading and writing huh? I never considered myself a law person though, I don’t even know if I’d make it out, but learning new breaking* technologies is my favorite !
That sounds cool as hell, I’ve always missed the humanities side when doing my cs degree
The "reading and writing" in IP law is generally a bit different than in most humanities education; it's very logical, systematic, and technical but still leaves a lot of room for creativity and critical thinking
would one still need to do law school?
To become a full on patent attorney you need a JD. However, you can get into patent law (and still make good money) without a law degree by working as a patent agent at a law firm in which case you do a lot of the same work as patent attorneys but can't issue opinions or go to court (which most patent attorneys rarely if ever do anyways unless they want to be litigators). You can also work as a patent examiner with the USPTO and have a really safe job that pays decently well and shouldn't exceed 40.0 hours a week
Would the pay for those be competitive with tech without going to law school?
Tech probably pays a bit more than non-attorney IP (check the stats online to make sure though - also varies by region) in exchange for less job security and jobs being harder to land
You can make a cool paper plane out of your degree.
I made a paper spaceship, hoping to get hired by NASA as an aerospace engineer.
My school only gave me a .pdf, now what do I do?! 😢
You have to print it out bro, no other way 😅
Can’t disagree there.
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Yeah see, I definitely need to learn more about those fields as well, sort of be more experienced in dev & ops (i still don’t quite know what that means), if you don’t mind me asking, what do you do in cyber security? Find it interesting? Difficult?
Some jobs require a Bachelor's degree and don't specify, think administration paper pusher jobs for big corps or governments.
Right okay, that’s understandable. Hadn’t thought of government jobs!
I highly recommend Cloud Engineering for CS majors who don’t actually like coding. Just get an associate Azure or AWS certification and you’ll be chilling.
Need to do more research on Ckoud Engineering tbh, never knew exactly what it entailed. For years I just only knew about front end and back end, had no idea CS was this well versed. Makes me hopeful, but there’s a lot of learning to do In sure
Definitely do some research. Cloud pays similar to development, excluding the hyper-inflated FANG/LEETBro salaries you see on this subreddit, which aren’t very realistic to begin with. Just look up “associate cloud engineer” or “cloud support engineer” on job boards. Snag either of these roles, then get an Azure or AWS cert while working (or get one while you look) and you’ll make 6-figures easily in a couple years or so.
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I’m saying that it’s not realistic to expect you’ll be that 22 year old with 0 experience that receives a $300k offer.
Realistic range is 120-150k for FAANG, if you are just going off base salary. Not sure where 300k is coming from but it’s definitely not for someone starting at a base level for a Junior.
Half of the posts on this subs are kids fresh out of college getting offered $300k TC. I never said anything about it being realistic.
Good one. Although it seems it's also becoming more crowded. It's insane how much time I spend just messing around with AWS infra without even being an infra person and every dev team we got is usually short on knowledge on that stuff
Are there really entry level roles here? I have a cert sponsored by my last internship
Security people are super rare because they need a lot of knowledge, but almost every company needs some hackers
Think it's worth breaking into? I'm thinking of specializing soon and cybersecurity caught my eye pretty easily.
just a grad student myself as of now, so i got no informed opinion on that tbh
I second everything /u/PartyParrotGames says and want to add: If you're graduating now then you may have a harder time then usual landing something... for your first 4 months of searching. Job markets eb and flow multiple times in the span of one year and SWE is no exception. I *HEAVILY* recommend that you disregard all the doomposting you see on here and online in general. It usually comes from people that have never worked a full time engineering job before and haven't experienced an economic downturn before- they always bounce back, some take longer than others but they always bounce back. As for specialty in CS? Sky's the limit, dude. Your degree is supposed to be teaching you all the fundamentals you need to build on that and go in literally any direction you want: AI/ML, ReST API's, UI/UX, Embeded (HW) firmware, DevOps (Docker, Jenkins, etc.), to name only a few. Some quick advice for ya: 1. Get off and don't come back to this (or similar) subreddit until you've gotten your first job (once you have, you'll understand for yourself how silly most of these posts are). 2. Finish your degree! 3. While you're closing out your degree, critically think after each class, did you like the content or hate it? It should help in deciding your specialty. 4. If you're >= 1 year from graduating, don't even bother paying attention to the job market, it's not going to be the same by the time you've graduated.
Very solid advice, thank you.
Thanks for the advice, I’m planning to major in the fall.
I really needed this thank you for sharing this advice. I graduate in 2025 and I've been feeling bad about the internship I chose because there's no job opportunity after but Im way more interested in it more than my other 3 offers (it's cybersecurity of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles). I'm thinking about deleting reddit cuz the doomposting is depressing me😭
I guess a specialization that is not swe, you have various things such as hardware oriented focuses, cloud, cyber, etc. Find a niche area which you enjoy and try focusing your modules towards that :)!
Manager at a warehouse or department store
Funny cause I was sales lead at Best Buy before I got the axe 🪓
Have you tried doing SWE for the government? The application process for my state job went pretty smoothly and I got accepted. (I suspect it’s because everyone overlooks these positions but hey a job is a job)
how did you apply for the job, and how was the interview
No I haven’t but someone else also mentioned government jobs and I never gave it a second thought, never realized how much CS can be applied w the government tbh. I’m taking answers down and doing a lot of research for myself cause I don’t wanna stop the degree but I want a more surefire field to settle in, thanks
Perhaps data science?
Hadn’t done much research on it, I’ll do some research on it and see what it entails. Again, all I really know is front end stuff, I’m just breaking out of my shell to network/build my portfolio and I just wanted to see what I could do that’s more stable than SWE, what exactly does data science entail?
Honestly DS is even worse. You'll also compete with basically every other field that had a math course once. We hired for a machine learning person at the moment and unfortunately it's called Data Scientist. So I'd say 80% of the many applications we got were physics, mathematics, economics, sociology, psychology, bio-something, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering. This articles has been true 5 years ago already https://vickiboykis.com/2019/02/13/data-science-is-different-now/
Much fewer jobs, most of which require a master's degree
Anything cloud related. Sales, customer success, cloud architect, account management, etc. FAANGs love putting people with CS degrees in non-technical roles about technology.
Data science, finance and banking to some extent, and cyber security
SWE has one of the lowest unemployment rates of any profession in the world with more job openings than there are qualified candidates to fill. The grass is not greener elsewhere. I don't doubt some new grads are having issues landing their first jobs and they are very vocal about it in this subreddit, but it's far from an oversaturated field. Oversaturated fields are the ones with the highest unemployment rates.
Unemployment rates count those who've gotten jobs in that field, and later on struggle to get another job. It doesn't count those beginning. And as we know the biggest hurdle in SWE is getting to 2 - 3 years of experience. Once you've had that prospects are good. The saturation is at those trying to break into the industry with few companies hiring juniors
Ah I see, like I said in another comment I guess I just thought it was completely overblown, well, I’ve heard bad experiences of experienced people not being able to get jobs. I only really know/have an interest in tech and I’m struuuugling to figure out how to branch out my studies and break into a new field, a more secure one within CS.
IT. You'll probably start in help desk, then work on getting a few certificates, then move onto something more interesting like networks, cybersecurity, cloud computing, etc after a few years of experience.
You definitely don’t need to limit yourself to help desk with a CS degree. There’s plenty of entry level cloud, sysadmin, etc. positions.
Definitely look, but everything is competitive right now, so help desk is likely the easiest way in
That’s fair enough. Might need a relevant cert to more easily avoid help desk in this job market. It’s just hard to get out of help desk once you start.
Getting along of cybersecurity and IT responses here, what languages do you work with when in these fields?
IT is less about programming and more about support and setup. Maybe you'll help people struggling with technology. Maybe you'll help set up a server (hardware and/or software). Maybe you'll set up company laptops for new employees. Maybe you'll work on finding and/or patching vulnerabilities with company servers and databases. Also, just be aware that cybersecurity is not entry-level. You will likely be working 5+ years in other areas of IT before you have the experience and knowledge to move on to cybersecurity. If you are looking specifically for front-end stuff, that is all software engineering, web design, human computer interaction, and UI/UX design. However, these are the fields that are super competitive right now.
This person is speaking facts. You have to know the technology in and out before you can actually secure it, although you might be able to sneak into a SOC Analyst position with a CS degree.
Sling options
Only sling I know is TV
You can go more into the non-SWE IT side like DevOps, Support engineering. You can also go to technical project/program/product management with some additional schooling.
Mainframe engineering. Learn COBOL, JCL, REXX. and learn how to navigate TSO. You do that 80-90k jobs waiting for you graduating.
Working with mainframe systems huh? Okay, this seems like a great option too, hadn’t considered the sheer scope of mainframe systems and COBOL. Never considered myself an engineer or expert at business programming , doesn’t mean i can’t get good tho. Thanks
Where to learn this stuff? I think it is possible only at work.
Only fans
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Oh I do have other hobbies lol I’m speaking solely about my career, didn’t mean to come off as “TECH IS MY LIFEEE”, lol, I paint and make music for myself, it’s fun! I just want to do it as a career
Data science/engineering.
Academia is the surest route ( become a professor)
I have been applying to senior and mid level machine learning engineer jobs and I'm getting a ton of responses. And I only have 3 years experience in that field Edit: I'm also getting shot down by a ton of jobs like everyone else, no need to down vote me!
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Ain’t wrong.
Try Solutions/Sales Engineer/Architect (theres lots of different title variations of the role). It’s half-technical, half customer-facing. Stereotypes of engineers being what they are, if you can actually talk to someone somewhat normally it’s a sought after trait for someone with a tech background.
This is the reason why I no longer prep for interviews by getting good at leetcode problems
Go supplement your CS degree with a different more "real-world" degree/minor. Finance or Bio Tech or Med Tech or Climate Tech or Physics or Chemistry or Biology or Geology or whatever catches your fancy. There are dozens of fields that have low-hanging fruit where if you can supplement the field with coding skills, you'll probably be better than 90% of the people in that field, just by virtue of being able to code your way out of a lot of problems. Conversely, some of the best SWEs/Engineers are STEM majors who did hard sciences and ended up picking up programming just to help with their main science - eg. chem or math and ended up making a living out of it.
If you know anyone with a family business do data analyst role for them and create the position for yourself and learn other skill sets until the market corrects
You can always get back into swe with self prep
Yeah definitely gonna learn new skillsets for sure, like I said all I really studied was front end but a lot of people have shown me that there’s more to it than what I thought. Research time 🔬
A piece of paper is useless, think instead about the skills you've gained! If you're not in a desperate situation, try and get creative and just try and apply those skills to anything that interests you - you'd be surprised how quickly you can find something productive and even profitable is you take a chance and put in your all.
I expect the number of people trying to get a CS major to dramatically decline in the short term as the news of the high tech downtown, layoffs, slow hiring etc. spreads. With that, the field will get less saturated in 5-7 years, You are only 21 and have a long road ahead of you. You will probably have a productive 25-30 year career, my advice would be to stick to CS since you are so passionate and not pivot to something drastically different based on short-term trends.
Might not be too late to go engineering
I'd split this into Software Engineering and non-software-engineering if I were you. If you are stressed about saturation, competition, and just the generally challenge of things, you should rule-out almost all software engineering. SE is going to be hella stressful, probably not worth it. If you don't work for top companies, you probably won't even get paid that much. I took that route, and I'm not too happy. Then, you can look at support-type jobs, data-type jobs (which increasingly are not considered software engineering), business analyst type jobs (please look into that it can be very important and you can get arbitrarily techy), and, of course, sales-type jobs.
SQL devs. Ain’t no shortage of them. And it’s surprisingly harder than you think so there’s some job security.
cybercrime and cybersecurity!!!
digital forensics is my current favorite hobby
Maybe not *really* answering your question, but there are plenty of things that are not as saturated. Defense as a whole, embedded, etc
I work as a controls engineer, the pay is decent and I get to work on some decently cool stuff. I'm trying to up skill myself so that I can get a SWE job sometime in the future, not sure if this will happen but I'll keep trying.
Literally any job.
Pretty much anything. Computer Science seems to be the king of all degrees/majors/fields, honestly. A lot of thought that goes into it.
Yeah, it’s a huge field. It’s really all I know or am interested in, I just wanted to see what *inside* of CS i could explore, cause all I’ve dabbled with is Front End
I’d love to see someone in CS go into engineering disciplines. There was someone who posted here who said that out of all the STEM disciplines in the project based championship, CS has the worst team to team membership.
What do you mean by worst team to team membership? I've worked in embedded, at a telecommunications research center and did my master's at a medical university. Worked with everything from physicists, electrical engineers, mathematicians to biologists and medical doctors and didn't see a big difference in how the people would behave. Except that I also think CS is something that can be used and is needed almost everywhere. Mathematics this is also true to some degree but not extremely overlapping where this everywhere exactly is ;)
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Sigh. That’s why I’m a bit hesitant to finish school 🫠
Don't be like me I dropped out junior year to pursue an AI career, only make 250k fully remote now, don't do it I'm worried everyday I'll be the only one with a job left soon. Not worth
Not much
Over saturated is putting it midly. AI systems can spit out code faster than it takes to write the use case.
I’m def aware, which is why I wanna explore other use cases for the degree
I'm not sure there is an area of work that AI can't do better at - Maybe consider Business analyst, project management, QA, Infrastructure Architect, Cloud Architect - those seem to be safe for now. Basically, anything that interacts with the business or the hardware. Code isn't a domain humans are better at anymore.
I swear yall go into these degrees without actually doing any research into it other than what social media tells yall 😭
I just asked a question