Video není dostupné.
Omlouváme se.
The Ugly Truth About Computer Science Degrees
Vložit
- čas přidán 29. 10. 2022
- Are you worried about getting a good computer science degree? In this video, we're going to deconstruct the reality of computer science degrees and show you the ugly truth.
Computer science degrees may seem like a good idea at first, but the reality is that a lot of them are completely unnecessary. In this video, we're going to share with you the truth about computer science degrees and show you how to get a good programming job without one. We'll also debunk some of the most common myths about computer science and programming, so you can make an informed decision about getting a degree, attending a coding bootcamp, or going the self taught route!
🚶♂️ FOLLOW ME 🚶♂️
Join Our Discord - / discord
Twitter - / codyengeltweets
TikTok - / codyengeltalks
Medium - / membership
Subscribe To My Newsletter - www.engel.dev/
💡Get 20% Off Of Brilliant - brilliant.sjv....
🎥 My CZcams Gear - kit.co/CodyEng...
🖥 My Desk Gear - kit.co/CodyEng...
🎵 My Background Audio - www.epidemicso...
*The above links are affiliate links.
📚 RESOURCES 📚
NIU Tuition Costs - www.niu.edu/fi...
Stanford Tuition Costs - financialaid.s...
NIU Master's Program - catalog.niu.ed...
NIU Graduate Tuition Costs - www.niu.edu/bu...
Stanford Graduate Costs - gradadmissions...
#softwareengineer #computerscience #college
Which path are you planning on taking to become a software engineer? If you're already a software engineer, then what advice would you give to other?
Here is a summary of what I learned in college:
1. College is a bad investment for the vast majority of student - per my (obviously tenured) Economics professor
2. Life is too short to code in COBOL
3. Some CS theory (data structures/algorithms/2s complement) that I had not learned on my own at that point
4. Many Universities treat their students like children, or at least Auburn did. I was docked a letter grade for being late to class because I wasn't able to find a parking spot during Alumni week. Why the heck am I paying these people again?
5. Not everyone teaching is competent at teaching. My calculus class was taught by a grad student that was brilliant in math but totally inept in teaching.
6. Smaller colleges or satellite campuses can provide a better learning experience by allowing students to get to know their professors vs auditorium classes
7. Colleges that have a large non-traditional student base tend to treat their students like adults
Learned after college:
1. No one cares where you went to college - unless it was MIT - otherwise it is just a checkmark on the job application form.
2. A lot of stuff you learn in college is rubbish, the real learning starts with your first post-college job. My first mentors at work were by far the best real professors I ever had.
3. IT field requires a lifetime of constant learning, basically reinventing yourself every 5 years or so.
4. Turns out, most of my high level math courses were not required. Never used more than basic high school level algebra during my career.
I’m in my 3rd year of Computer Science at Auburn and I don’t feel like they treat us like children. Also, my teachers (for the most part) have been amazing, especially the AI and machine learning teachers. Also many teachers are strict about tardiness but thats not necessarily babying.
I’m a double major and don’t have to take calculus 2 and thank God lol cause I’ve heard its bad.
@@DonovanGG__ To be fair, this was 25 years ago, it is entirely possible they have changed their policies. But, I remember getting docked a letter grade simply because I missed to many classes - and a lot of that was because of bad parking. I compared that experience with Troy University at Dothan - which catered to non-traditional students, which were older and had jobs - so there was more flexibility. There was actually one class I had to show up three days - first day, mid-terms, and finals - everything else was optional.
Having been in the industry since 2000, i have been through several economic downturns and when jobs are few, companies have higher requirements and will require a 4 year CS degree.
I got my CS degree at a state school and never went beyond Bachelor's. I have been laid off twice and out of work less than a month total in my entire career.
If you go the self-taught route just know that you might need a larger emergency fund for the downtimes but that's always good advice.
Don't get me wrong, PhDs are definitely not for everyone, but they are absolutely about more than the lifetime-earnings-maximization. They allow you to pursue a research topic as in depth as it gets, with a high degree of freedom, and it involves a kind of work that is hard to do anywhere else. You also will meet genuinely amazing people as pretty much everyone on the same path is there for passion, not money, which is very rare to find elsewhere. It's also not at all comparable with doing courses on Brilliant (or similar), since someone pursuing a CS PhD in a deep learning field will work on methods often years ahead of those courses. Again, not advocating for a PhD, it's a grueling path of work that is often not rewarding, and it's a mental health gauntlet. But don't make the decision based on lifetime earnings alone. Chances are, if you're already on the CS path, you'll do fine anyway earnings wise.
This is really insightful and I agree that you wouldn't want to get a PhD to maximize lifetime earnings and that degree of freedom you have to pursue research topics would be impossible to get anywhere else.
Certainly not for everyone (or even most people I'd say) but it's a great option for those that want it. Plus it can also turn into incredibly lucrative businesses as I'm sure Larry Page and Sergey Brin could attest to ☺️
@@CodyEngelCodesHello. Please help with your advice. I am interested in programming, I love technology, Linux. And now my father says that they can help me get a degree in Computer Science. But some say that this education is unimportant and has no meaning. And computer science is useless. Please tell me if this is true? Are diplomas and knowledge still important? thank you
With all due respect, I think this is a bit overly simplistic. Realistically, only the bachelors comparisons are relevant here; and even there, there are some other ways to go about it to reduce cost (e.g., community college prior to transfer, living at home, etc.). By and large, the BS CS is still pretty much the gold standard in terms of "ticket of admissions" into an entry level gig.
I have a previous degree (Engineering, non-EE/non-CE) and eventually went the boot camp route to transition into SWE work (I'm also working part-time towards an MS CS online now, for $7k total via Georgia Tech). Most of the people from my boot camp cohort who got jobs the fastest were the ones with degrees. The other thing to note is that a CS degree will open avenues to many areas within the CS space that are otherwise "gate-kept"; a boot camp will only qualify you mainly for stuff like web and mobile development, but otherwise you will largely be excluded from anything dealing with hardware, systems, high-performance applications, etc. which will be by-and-large reserved for the domain of CS grads (or equivalent technical degrees/backgrounds).
As for grad school, you glossed over it, but it's fairly common practice to get funded as a PhD candidate, assuming you are accepted into a research lab with funding. This means the school (mainly via research grants and other funding sources) covers not only tuition, but also provides a stipend for living expenses (i.e., you won't typically incur debt during this time as a result). It's true that you won't net out a lot of income over that time (typically 5-7 years from start to final thesis/dissertation defense), and there is indeed still an opportunity cost there. But depending on your research area (e.g., machine learning), there is a lot of very specialized, highly compensated work out there for those skills, and you won't be competing with yet another code monkey doing CRUD apps (not meant disparagingly here; on the contrary, I am a fellow code monkey 🐒)
Not intended to be combative here, for the record, but do want to provide a balanced opinion/perspective here, as I think there is a preponderance of advice along the lines of "don't waste your time on college, you don't learn anything practical," when in reality, there is more to the story than that...
Hey thanks for the feedback and it's not competitive at all. These videos are difficult to make because I'm fighting against giving enough information while avoiding creating an hour long video.
I think this video would have been better served had I glossed over the numbers a bit more and talked more to the experiences you'd get at each level. However this video was focused on the monetary benefits of each option so maybe glossing over the numbers would have been a bad idea 😅
I do think this could warrant another video sometime in the future though where I can talk more about what you might be giving up going down one path as opposed to another. Definitely agree that if you want to work in hardware or HFT then a bootcamp or self taught is a terrible idea.
Similar to that I can certainly see folks with a college degree who then attended a bootcamp having an easier time finding a job just because of the soft skills they picked up to get their degree. This video isn't intended to be "don't get a degree ever" but instead to lay out the numbers and give folks another point of view, at the very least I think everyone should at least get an associates degree and focus on taking interesting gen-ed courses to help shape their world view. And realistically if you can afford it, getting a bachelors degree would still be the route I'd suggest to anyone, however for those without the money there are other options that can still lead to high paying jobs.
Thanks again for the comment, really appreciate it ☺️
@Rupesh Patel Georgia Tech offers online MS CS (OMSCS) program at that price point. University of Texas-Austin (MSCSO) and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign also offer similar programs, though they cost more than GT's program.
Interesting analysis. I don't disagree with your conclusions but the fact for most people is that most applicants apply with at least a BS CS, especially for the more cushy jobs, and if you're the only one without that checked off then you're already starting off the application at a loss.
A lot of companies are actually excluding university as a requirement, I believe Google did away with that requirement several years back at this point.
@@CodyEngelCodesdoesnt mean it isnt a disadvantage
I'm currently going for a bachelor's through my employer. When the funding from my employer runs out for the year, I still have my GI bill to fall back on.
Since the uni I'm going to is competency based, I'm gunning to finish this degree in 2 years.
WGU?
Doing a PhD in AI is a totally different game from doing any online course. In PhD, you don't just do some coursework, you create new knowledge. You of course learn quite some part of the existing knowledge and also learn how to create new knowledge.
these salary numbers are funny. in germany 100k€ p.a. is the top end for software developers without being a manager. 85k is a good salary for senior software architects
Yeah the US is a little nutty, but also we have pretty weak labor regulations.
I think if you take out health insurance type costs and that you are getting paid instead of almost no holiday it can average closer but totally agree for Uk and Europe after uni getting a job for £35-45k would be standard and then being above £75k unless you are in banking or a high end field is going to be into management levels not a regular coder (slightly higher maybe as I’m thinking over last 20y)
A friend of a friend (who I have met in person) studied and worked on quantum-proof encryption algorithms as part of his (maths) PHD. Got a good job after, and has had at least one job offer nearing the seven-figure mark... Of course, that doesn't mean that all PHDs (or graduates, sorry to say) will get the same result.
Good video. I'm not currently involved with any sort of engineering at all. I'm 20. If I wished to be a software engineering, I'd choose the coding bootcamp, or the self-taught route. I'm currently in Pakistan with not much money, so that might be slightly affecting my choice.
Not sure what it's like in Pakistan but self taught or a bootcamp sounds like a decent option. The nice thing about self taught is there's no real commitment, you can try it out and if you hate it, you're only out your time and maybe a little bit of money.
Lol its not as easy as you think to get a job with just a bootcamp cert. Most places require a degree as a requirement and the few that don't, are highly competitive
This isnt really straightforward with the fact that phds at prestigious universities are paid for by the university including the masters. U mention that, but it is a side note. I agree that in most cases, it is an economically bad choice in computer science to do a phd. But ur explanation isnt clear.
With a PhD it's not as if you are getting paid top dollar for your time though. I do wish I could have been clearer in the video but it was already getting fairly long so needed to make it as a cliff note unfortunately 😞
Although I am interested to hear about folks experience with getting a PhD and why they chose that path over others.
Thats just wild, a Computer Science bachelors in Australia is only like $14,000 USD (for Australian Citizens)
how is this possible??? Can I transfer here to finish my degree from california??
Germany's even cheaper! We find it incredible what Americans have to pay for education.
American university system is fucked! 56K tuition 😂
182k a year that’s more than I have in gross turnover 😂
I am glad I just did tradeschool EE, technically IT (CD( didn’t exist in 1990 as BSc in NL. And business IT didn’t appeal to me. So I didn’t electrical engineering for microelectronics- a hell of a lot of lowlevel technical computer stuff in that! I think it cost me the equivalent of 4K a year back then so about 8K now. Which my parents and I could easily afford. Especially with me being a pro musician in the evenings. Ironically I wanted to study at the Royal conservatory but k didn’t get in. My second option was filmacademie where I had gotten in, but because I waited so long on the conservatory my place was given to someone else. But my entry film was so nice that they’d allow me bling next semester.
Now the thing was that we had military duty and I was turning 18 so I’d be drafted if I wasn’t in college. Since EE is considered hard (like all STEM), meant that there were ample places available. Except my maths grade was too low (I suck at abstract math). So I had to do a summer course aan gotten in. So no draft! And for the first time in my academic career I had fun and I excelled. Because electronics I dabbled it and computers and programming I knew more than most teachers, as I wrote and hacked software since the age of 10. Especially low level on the C64 in assembly. So that 16K was a great investment. Something I turn over now every month as a self employed IT person. Which is about the average hourly rate for externals.
I dropped out of college bc most professors are full of sh!t
A new professor who came to our school, and I was spending office hours with me and get to know him. He was teaching a data structure algorithm course.
He asked me what kind of project should I gave to my students. I told him, some short of link-list project I guessed and other projects ideas.. welp I p!ssed bunch of students lol. Pretty much I did his lazy work.
I learned that most people with PHd are full of Sh!t. I know people who cheated their bachelor, master, Phd and they're got good job I guessed.
Pretty much, watching the good will hunting taught me a lot of things (still my fav movie)
Just go to a state school for CS. Sheesh. I took the first two years of my bachelors at the community college and saved even more. I've been working steadily as a software engineer for the last 20 years, so it's safe to say where I got my bachelors didn't really matter as long as it was accredited.
Good video. This is an important video, it would be even better if you explain more, that is not just the difference in money.
I have a two year degree and a four year degree from the 1980's. I agree with you that a two year degree is best. The two year degree gets your mind ready for programming.
The problem with the 4 year degree is cost and you have lost two years of practice and experience.
Once you learn how to program any language well, you can learn a new language faster and better by doing rather than college.
But it is not all about coding. After you have worked for a few years, going back to school part time for your 4 year degree is best.
If you later decide you want more, do it part time and get an MBA. At a certain point it is more about managing people than coding. I am old and retired. What do I know.
I would say a CompSci degree is not entirely worthless as you can work in IT with it esp Cloud and DevOps. AI has been the next big thing given that AI is a sub field of Computer Science for machine learning. You don't necessarily have to always go into software engineering with a CS degree given how broad the field is.
Thanks for your video; it was very interesting. I would like to mention that pursuing a Ph.D. is not solely about money but rather a passion for science. Someone with a Ph.D. will have a different job than a self-taught coder. The scientific background acquired during a Bachelor's or Master's degree opens up more opportunities and possibilities.
Imagine a company where all employees are senior coders, but none of them have a science background. While they may excel at coding websites and APIs, they would struggle with anything related to mathematics and physics. You need individuals who can handle derivatives, statistics, integrals, algebra, etc., to create accurate specifications for software.
Being a developer isn't just about coding in JavaScript and Node.js or working for big tech companies. There is a significant portion of the industry where a Bachelor's degree is the minimum requirement to start a job. For instance, imagine you need to program an industrial robot to perform specific tasks; you would need to deal with vectors, integrals, electricity formulas, laws of physics, speed calculations, polynomial equations, and Boolean algebra. This is why studying computer science often leads to a Bachelor's degree in science.
A Ph.D. equips you with research methodologies and the ability to publish results. You won't find a Ph.D. in Computer Science, with 10 years of experience, waking up in the morning to fix bugs in a backlog at a coder "farm." Instead, you would spend most of your time conducting research and teaching.
A coder from a coding bootcamp, with 10 years of experience, would likely be a senior developer, principal, or product manager. If they are good at working with people, they could even become a team manager.
Both paths offer exciting opportunities, but they are not the same. Comparing them solely based on financial aspects is unproductive and could lead people to make the wrong decisions.
Yeah for sure, you aren't getting a Ph.D to become a software engineer. You should have specific reasons for wanting to obtain one and if the reason is "more money" then it ain't for you.
Yes, please. Make a video of finding a job as a self-taught engineer.
Those prices sound insane.
If degrees didn't matter no one would be so proud to put they have one on their resume.
cs degree useless tho
@lemonstrangler lol good luck trying to find a tech job without a cs degree. Bootcamp certs aren't as useful as you think
i think i.t degree is more worthwhile atleast than cs degree. @@manofsteel9051
The difference between a bachelors degree and coding bootcamp is like the difference between an NBA player and a middle schooler. Self-taught can get some stuff done, but they really don't understand anything yet. The CS degree takes you through OS, compilers, programming languages, formal proofs/computing, just so much stuff. And in this economy most companies are laying off. Which means anyone hiring is only going to be the absolute top tier candidates. People with no degree are getting thrown out.
I went through a bachelors program.Only a few classes went meaningfully beyond what I self-taught in high school, and I've heard several people complain about new grads not actually understanding much and not being able to think independently
@@klikkolee Yeah I mean by it's very nature, half the people graduating are below average. You still have to find the people who learned stuff. But think of it this way. If the college grads are that bad, imagine how much worse the people who didn't go to college are.
I agree with you, in BSc, you learn a methodology to analyze, understand and solve problems.
You are looking at total costs of those degrees, not the difference between those and something else.
First, you shouldn't include room and board as you'd have to pay some form of that if you didn't go to college.
Second, you should include lost income. If you didn't go to college, you'd be working. Assume $40k a year with some basic programming job.
Third, you really should include some type of formal training in there. At least a year of some type of diploma, basic classes, online courses, etc.
Sir from which university did you graduated?
NIU
this channel has so much value
Thanks ☺️