Don’t major in CS

[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?

+1 DS, CS/Applied math, started in a college research program in sophomore year which helped him get a good internship which got him a good post-grad job. Also had a offer from the company where he did his major's capstone project. Said his internship interviews really only wanted to talk with him about his research experiences. You have to be building your resume while you are in school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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?

+1 DS, CS/Applied math, started in a college research program in sophomore year which helped him get a good internship which got him a good post-grad job. Also had a offer from the company where he did his major's capstone project. Said his internship interviews really only wanted to talk with him about his research experiences. You have to be building your resume while you are in school.

+1
And again, that's the same for most majors. We emphasized to both our kids while they were in HS about internships while in college. Both DH and I did internships in college, and we are in our late 50s/60. I was not a CS major.

[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.

Let me guess - your kid is a CS major and you want to lower the amount of competition?

The major has been incredibly streaky in placement for new graduates for decades. This is not a new phenomenon.

[Anonymous]

Many companies prefer to hire international students who can legally work in the US after graduating under the OPT program for three years.

Employers save around 8% because they don’t have to pay social security or Medicare taxes for them. They also know they are willing to work long hours without complaining because they make more than they would in their home countries.

Amazon alone hired 5,379 internationals in 2024 under the OPT program. So if your kid cant find a job in CS, reach out to your representatives in Congress.

[Anonymous]

People sending their kids off to major in CS with massive price tags should really be smarter about doing the research. Every major tech CEO is out there telling you NOT to do that. Every.single.one. In every chat they have with podcasters or conference fireside chats or general briefings, they are saying the world is changing for entry-level talent in CS, and to skip it altogether. If you don't want to pay attention, then it's on you. Internships do not equate to job offers. Job offers do not equate to actually starting when they say they'll start. Jensen was recently at the CSIS forum (yesterday!) and again conveyed the exact same message. Karp, Musk, Zuckerberg, Pichai, Altman, Cook ... all of them are saying the exact same thing!! Focus away from surfing college admissions stats and insights on how to get into the T20, and instead follow some of these people on major platforms where they are giving you the playbook for what they'll be looking for in hiring talent. They are not shying away from giving you that insight.

[Anonymous]

My kid switched to systems engineering with a minor in CS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People sending their kids off to major in CS with massive price tags should really be smarter about doing the research. Every major tech CEO is out there telling you NOT to do that. Every.single.one. In every chat they have with podcasters or conference fireside chats or general briefings, they are saying the world is changing for entry-level talent in CS, and to skip it altogether. If you don't want to pay attention, then it's on you. Internships do not equate to job offers. Job offers do not equate to actually starting when they say they'll start. Jensen was recently at the CSIS forum (yesterday!) and again conveyed the exact same message. Karp, Musk, Zuckerberg, Pichai, Altman, Cook ... all of them are saying the exact same thing!! Focus away from surfing college admissions stats and insights on how to get into the T20, and instead follow some of these people on major platforms where they are giving you the playbook for what they'll be looking for in hiring talent. They are not shying away from giving you that insight.

In fairness...folks like Dario Amodei at Anthropic and the CEO of Ford are out saying that 25% of the entire white collar workforce may be replaced by AI.

I think there is a very important distinction here which is that the kids who are able to jump in as the equivalent of 3rd to 5th year employees, and are adept using all the AI tools will in fact be in very high demand. This is where you will see massive bifurcation even between grads at the same school...the kid who has been coding since 10 and has a huge GitHub portfolio and can hit the ground running with minimal training will have significantly different prospects from the kid who decided to study CS, but is coming into college green.

That's why you see in the WSJ article referenced above that some grads are in huge demand and commanding high salaries.

It will also eliminate the kids who actually aren't that interested in CS, but majored in it because they thought it was the ticket to a good job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People sending their kids off to major in CS with massive price tags should really be smarter about doing the research. Every major tech CEO is out there telling you NOT to do that. Every.single.one. In every chat they have with podcasters or conference fireside chats or general briefings, they are saying the world is changing for entry-level talent in CS, and to skip it altogether. If you don't want to pay attention, then it's on you. Internships do not equate to job offers. Job offers do not equate to actually starting when they say they'll start. Jensen was recently at the CSIS forum (yesterday!) and again conveyed the exact same message. Karp, Musk, Zuckerberg, Pichai, Altman, Cook ... all of them are saying the exact same thing!! Focus away from surfing college admissions stats and insights on how to get into the T20, and instead follow some of these people on major platforms where they are giving you the playbook for what they'll be looking for in hiring talent. They are not shying away from giving you that insight.

In fairness...folks like Dario Amodei at Anthropic and the CEO of Ford are out saying that 25% of the entire white collar workforce may be replaced by AI.

I think there is a very important distinction here which is that the kids who are able to jump in as the equivalent of 3rd to 5th year employees, and are adept using all the AI tools will in fact be in very high demand. This is where you will see massive bifurcation even between grads at the same school...the kid who has been coding since 10 and has a huge GitHub portfolio and can hit the ground running with minimal training will have significantly different prospects from the kid who decided to study CS, but is coming into college green.

That's why you see in the WSJ article referenced above that some grads are in huge demand and commanding high salaries.

It will also eliminate the kids who actually aren't that interested in CS, but majored in it because they thought it was the ticket to a good job.

There is a clear distinction between an entry-level computer science graduate (whether you view yourself as a 3-5th year employee or not) and someone who comes in with hands-on LLM development experience. A CS degree typically provides strong theory and general software engineering fundamentals, but it does not automatically include practical work with transformers, model fine-tuning, or building LLM-powered systems. Candidates who have direct experience training or integrating large language models bring a specialized, applied skill set—often gained through research, advanced electives, or industry projects—that most new CS graduates do not possess. As a result, the two profiles are viewed differently in hiring, particularly for AI-focused roles where LLM experience is a significant differentiator.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid switched to systems engineering with a minor in CS.

Is systems engineering really that much better? EE I could see, they've always had the highest starting salary out of undergrad.

[Anonymous]

You can go work for fed, state, and local government. Those guys always get the bottom rung of the CS profiles. But given the pay, maybe don't accumulate a ton of debt or loss of savings for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid switched to systems engineering with a minor in CS.

Is systems engineering really that much better? EE I could see, they've always had the highest starting salary out of undergrad.

No clue; you’re probably right.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People sending their kids off to major in CS with massive price tags should really be smarter about doing the research. Every major tech CEO is out there telling you NOT to do that. Every.single.one. In every chat they have with podcasters or conference fireside chats or general briefings, they are saying the world is changing for entry-level talent in CS, and to skip it altogether. If you don't want to pay attention, then it's on you. Internships do not equate to job offers. Job offers do not equate to actually starting when they say they'll start. Jensen was recently at the CSIS forum (yesterday!) and again conveyed the exact same message. Karp, Musk, Zuckerberg, Pichai, Altman, Cook ... all of them are saying the exact same thing!! Focus away from surfing college admissions stats and insights on how to get into the T20, and instead follow some of these people on major platforms where they are giving you the playbook for what they'll be looking for in hiring talent. They are not shying away from giving you that insight.

In fairness...folks like Dario Amodei at Anthropic and the CEO of Ford are out saying that 25% of the entire white collar workforce may be replaced by AI.

I think there is a very important distinction here which is that the kids who are able to jump in as the equivalent of 3rd to 5th year employees, and are adept using all the AI tools will in fact be in very high demand. This is where you will see massive bifurcation even between grads at the same school...the kid who has been coding since 10 and has a huge GitHub portfolio and can hit the ground running with minimal training will have significantly different prospects from the kid who decided to study CS, but is coming into college green.

That's why you see in the WSJ article referenced above that some grads are in huge demand and commanding high salaries.

It will also eliminate the kids who actually aren't that interested in CS, but majored in it because they thought it was the ticket to a good job.

Yep, I stated above... every interview DC had asked about the use of AI.

[Anonymous]

The average CS grad starting salary in Virginia is $85,640.

Next July the starting salary for an Arlington County police officer will be $90,012 with a $25,000 signing bonus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop with the nonsense. Do you even get what cs is?

No experience, no luck. The market is awash in RIFed workers with experience. New graduates need not apply.

https://www.cengagegroup.com/news/perspectives/2025/computer-science-grads-facing-a-lack-of-entry-level-jobs-and-a-career-readiness-gap/

https://www.synergisticit.com/why-tech-companies-dont-hire-recent-cs-graduates/

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/computer-science-college-graduates-jobs

https://www.thecollegefix.com/computer-engineering-grads-face-double-the-unemployment-rate-of-art-history-majors/

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/technology/coding-ai-jobs-students.html

https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2025/06/06/computer-science-majors-were-promised-six-figures-so-why-are-they-unemployed/

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm21dvg8l1go

This is what our May 2025 CS grad has found. The only people he knows with CS jobs are those who got them through nepotism. I think if you can’t land that first internship, it is incredibly difficult because one internship leads to the next once you have experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People sending their kids off to major in CS with massive price tags should really be smarter about doing the research. Every major tech CEO is out there telling you NOT to do that. Every.single.one. In every chat they have with podcasters or conference fireside chats or general briefings, they are saying the world is changing for entry-level talent in CS, and to skip it altogether. If you don't want to pay attention, then it's on you. Internships do not equate to job offers. Job offers do not equate to actually starting when they say they'll start. Jensen was recently at the CSIS forum (yesterday!) and again conveyed the exact same message. Karp, Musk, Zuckerberg, Pichai, Altman, Cook ... all of them are saying the exact same thing!! Focus away from surfing college admissions stats and insights on how to get into the T20, and instead follow some of these people on major platforms where they are giving you the playbook for what they'll be looking for in hiring talent. They are not shying away from giving you that insight.

Applied math. Honestly a grounding in applied math is a life long investment. I would much much rather my kid focused on the fundamentals in college rather than a CS degree.