Don’t major in CS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is been doing internships and getting call backs for the three years he has been a CS major.

Same for my kid. They had 5 internship offers for 2026. They are going to do two, possibly three in the summer and fall. Pay is crazy high. All from big tech and quant firms. And they are not at a T10.

You should have them contact the NYT. I’m sure they’d do a front page story about them. I keep forgetting every poster here is truly exceptional, with even more exceptional spawn that all go Top 20 and get multiple $500k job offers before they even declare a major.

From August 2025 WSJ:

It’s a tough time to be a young person looking for a job—unless you’re in artificial intelligence.

The job market for entry-level workers is in a continued slump. The unemployment rate for new college graduates was 4.8% in June, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, compared with 4% for all workers.

While AI is part of the reason for the doldrums, there is a bright spot when it comes to workers with actual experience in machine learning. They’re in their early 20s, they have AI know-how, and a bunch of them are making $1 million a year.

Base salaries for nonmanagerial workers in AI with zero to three years experience grew by around 12% from 2024 to 2025, the largest gain of any experience group, according to a new report by the AI staffing firm Burtch Works, which analyzed the compensation of thousands of AI and data-science candidates. The report also found that people with AI experience are being promoted to management roles roughly twice as fast as their counterparts in other technology fields. They’re jumping the ladder as a result of their skills and impact instead of their years on the job.

“There is a significant salary difference between a machine-learning engineer job and a software-engineer job,” says Anil K. Gupta, a professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business and co-lead of its AI job tracker.

Databricks, the data-analytics software company whose value has skyrocketed during the AI boom, plans to triple the number of people it hires right out of school this year, in part because of their familiarity with AI.

A generative-AI research scientist with as little as two years experience can make base salaries between $190,000 and $260,000 at Databricks, according to the company’s job-postings page. Including stock grants, the overall compensation can be much higher.

“We definitely have people, quite junior people, that have big impact, and they’re getting paid a lot,” says Ghodsi. “Under 25, you can be making a million.”

Lily Ma, after graduating in December with an AI-concentration computer-science major from Carnegie Mellon University, applied for 30 to 40 jobs. She had interviews with about a dozen. “I did notice that having research experience helps a lot,” she says. (She also interned at Tesla.)

The 22-year-old landed at Scale AI but turned down some tempting offers, including from a startup that offered a 1% stake in the company.

[Anonymous]

A college degree has never been a golden ticket. Crazy that people never figure that out over the years. It merely is a launch point for a rat race where many people get trampled.

AI is going to heighten this trampling x 10!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Correction: don't major in CS is you are just mediocre at it. Those who are very good at it are getting jobs, and internships.

Someone needs to support the AI ecosystem. Those someones are CS people.

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Correction: don't major in CS is you are just mediocre at it. Those who are very good at it are getting jobs, and internships.

Someone needs to support the AI ecosystem. Those someones are CS people.

Exactly. Listen to Dr Werner Vogels keynote at AWS re:Invent today. AI assists developers, not replace them! We are still hiring smart CS grads with holistic skills.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A college degree has never been a golden ticket. Crazy that people never figure that out over the years. It merely is a launch point for a rat race where many people get trampled.

AI is going to heighten this trampling x 10!

For immigrant families, it often is. They push their children intensely to get into the best colleges, equating that achievement with life success—because that’s the path that brought them to this country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Computer Science has one of the highest unemployment rates for recent graduates. Everyone thought it was a lock for highly compensated jobs right out of school. Colleges and universities currently have overpopulated CS pipelines that dump new grads into an economy and workforce that don’t want employees without years of real world experience. Couple that with the influence AI is currently exerting on the profession and it makes it very risky to pay hundreds of thousands for a degree that could be incredibly devalued by 2030.

You must be a male Humanities major.

Bless your heart.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is been doing internships and getting call backs for the three years he has been a CS major.

Same for my kid. They had 5 internship offers for 2026. They are going to do two, possibly three in the summer and fall. Pay is crazy high. All from big tech and quant firms. And they are not at a T10.

How did they get connected for them? DD not heading to a T20 but still a good school and I am trying to understand how they go about this with all the AI and visa applicant competition.

leetcode leetcode leetcode, and apply apply apply, and apply early. Some of the internships open in July. If you wait till late fall, it's too late.

Hone those interviewing skills and get the resume reviewed.

That's all my kid did. I think it helps that they are a straight A student (always has been) and a dual math/CS major.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A college degree has never been a golden ticket. Crazy that people never figure that out over the years. It merely is a launch point for a rat race where many people get trampled.

AI is going to heighten this trampling x 10!

For immigrant families, it often is. They push their children intensely to get into the best colleges, equating that achievement with life success—because that’s the path that brought them to this country.

for the vast majority of people, education is indeed the ticket out of poverty. That was the case for me - from a low income immigrant family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is been doing internships and getting call backs for the three years he has been a CS major.

Same for my kid. They had 5 internship offers for 2026. They are going to do two, possibly three in the summer and fall. Pay is crazy high. All from big tech and quant firms. And they are not at a T10.

You should have them contact the NYT. I’m sure they’d do a front page story about them. I keep forgetting every poster here is truly exceptional, with even more exceptional spawn that all go Top 20 and get multiple $500k job offers before they even declare a major.

From August 2025 WSJ:

It’s a tough time to be a young person looking for a job—unless you’re in artificial intelligence.

The job market for entry-level workers is in a continued slump. The unemployment rate for new college graduates was 4.8% in June, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, compared with 4% for all workers.

While AI is part of the reason for the doldrums, there is a bright spot when it comes to workers with actual experience in machine learning. They’re in their early 20s, they have AI know-how, and a bunch of them are making $1 million a year.

Base salaries for nonmanagerial workers in AI with zero to three years experience grew by around 12% from 2024 to 2025, the largest gain of any experience group, according to a new report by the AI staffing firm Burtch Works, which analyzed the compensation of thousands of AI and data-science candidates. The report also found that people with AI experience are being promoted to management roles roughly twice as fast as their counterparts in other technology fields. They’re jumping the ladder as a result of their skills and impact instead of their years on the job.

“There is a significant salary difference between a machine-learning engineer job and a software-engineer job,” says Anil K. Gupta, a professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business and co-lead of its AI job tracker.

Databricks, the data-analytics software company whose value has skyrocketed during the AI boom, plans to triple the number of people it hires right out of school this year, in part because of their familiarity with AI.

A generative-AI research scientist with as little as two years experience can make base salaries between $190,000 and $260,000 at Databricks, according to the company’s job-postings page. Including stock grants, the overall compensation can be much higher.

“We definitely have people, quite junior people, that have big impact, and they’re getting paid a lot,” says Ghodsi. “Under 25, you can be making a million.”

Lily Ma, after graduating in December with an AI-concentration computer-science major from Carnegie Mellon University, applied for 30 to 40 jobs. She had interviews with about a dozen. “I did notice that having research experience helps a lot,” she says. (She also interned at Tesla.)

The 22-year-old landed at Scale AI but turned down some tempting offers, including from a startup that offered a 1% stake in the company.

CS majors need to know how to use AI. DC said every internship interview they had asked about the use of AI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s rough out there.

https://www.reddit.com/r/theprimeagen/comments/1ov5ee1/a_cooked_computer_science_grads_perspective/

He notes he graduated August 2025, he says he spent 4 years in college and had zero CS related internships or outside of class work!
That is almost unbelievable. Everyone, everyone in my kids' schools look fervently for internships or research experience with a professor starting as early as freshman summer. Many of them get them the next summer, then a better opportunity after junior summer. Many have jobs during the semester that relate to their major: TA, research, etc. How does a student have nothing outside of class? Did his college not encourage that? Did he have no friends trying to get jobs related to their career while in college?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is been doing internships and getting call backs for the three years he has been a CS major.

Same for my kid. They had 5 internship offers for 2026. They are going to do two, possibly three in the summer and fall. Pay is crazy high. All from big tech and quant firms. And they are not at a T10.

How did they get connected for them? DD not heading to a T20 but still a good school and I am trying to understand how they go about this with all the AI and visa applicant competition.

leetcode leetcode leetcode, and apply apply apply, and apply early. Some of the internships open in July. If you wait till late fall, it's too late.

Hone those interviewing skills and get the resume reviewed.

That's all my kid did. I think it helps that they are a straight A student (always has been) and a dual math/CS major.

I also have a CS major. No time for leetcode after school and clubs, etc. Does your kid not do clubs? FWIW, my kid does have a job offer for when they graduate so no complaints here. Just curious how your kid manages leetcode.

[Anonymous]

Uh-oh. Even more experienced workers are about to enter the job market. This trend will continue across tech, further crippling the chances of CS majors to get a job after graduation.

https://www.thehrdigest.com/do-metas-metaverse-budget-cuts-signal-incoming-layoffs/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s rough out there.

https://www.reddit.com/r/theprimeagen/comments/1ov5ee1/a_cooked_computer_science_grads_perspective/

He notes he graduated August 2025, he says he spent 4 years in college and had zero CS related internships or outside of class work!
That is almost unbelievable. Everyone, everyone in my kids' schools look fervently for internships or research experience with a professor starting as early as freshman summer. Many of them get them the next summer, then a better opportunity after junior summer. Many have jobs during the semester that relate to their major: TA, research, etc. How does a student have nothing outside of class? Did his college not encourage that? Did he have no friends trying to get jobs related to their career while in college?

ah..yes, that was his problem. Most students, irrespective of major, should get an internship. I had one as a BBA major in the 90s, which segued into a job.

My CS major kid has had 2 internships already, one coming up. The past two internships wanted DC to come back, but DC got a better internship this summer that pays an insane amount.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is been doing internships and getting call backs for the three years he has been a CS major.

Same for my kid. They had 5 internship offers for 2026. They are going to do two, possibly three in the summer and fall. Pay is crazy high. All from big tech and quant firms. And they are not at a T10.

How did they get connected for them? DD not heading to a T20 but still a good school and I am trying to understand how they go about this with all the AI and visa applicant competition.

leetcode leetcode leetcode, and apply apply apply, and apply early. Some of the internships open in July. If you wait till late fall, it's too late.

Hone those interviewing skills and get the resume reviewed.

That's all my kid did. I think it helps that they are a straight A student (always has been) and a dual math/CS major.

I also have a CS major. No time for leetcode after school and clubs, etc. Does your kid not do clubs? FWIW, my kid does have a job offer for when they graduate so no complaints here. Just curious how your kid manages leetcode.

Intensive leetcoding can be like a PT job. They are involved in a social club, and one research project.

TBH, employers for CS jobs don't really care about clubs that much. DC also worked PT for a few months as a SWE at a small startup.

For CS jobs, employers want to know you have the technical chops to do the work, but of course, having great communication skill helps a lot, which DC does.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Uh-oh. Even more experienced workers are about to enter the job market. This trend will continue across tech, further crippling the chances of CS majors to get a job after graduation.

https://www.thehrdigest.com/do-metas-metaverse-budget-cuts-signal-incoming-layoffs/

Not all CS jobs are the same. What types of SWE are they?

META is heavily focusing on AI, so if those SWE don't know how to use AI much, then it's harder for those people to pivot.

The tech industry moves fast, so yes, you can become a dinosaur very quickly.

Both my spouse and I were in the tech industry for 20 years, and we had become dinos probably like 8 years ago. The 59 yr old just retired; the younger spouse pivoted out of tech 8 years ago.