Add in that what today appears a safe and secure path is not guaranteed to stay that way. Economic conditions go through cycles, the realities and requirements of careeres evolve, as has been discussed on this thread. Outsourcing, obsolesence, etc may become an issue, even if it doesn’t look likely today. I have no quarrel with the choices anyone makes, or why-different strokes for different folks-but I wonder how many are banking on security that may not last.
When I was in high school, the “best” careers, i.e. high paying, secure, and prestigious, were doctor* and lawyer. I don’t recall engineering being talked about much (but that may be because I’m female and it wouldn’t have been suggested to us ). There’s much more emphasis on STEM these days, at least compared to when and where I grew up.
Today the “it” career is Computer Science. Will that be true in another decade? The “it” career 20 years into the future probably hasn’t been invented yet. And so on.
*I recall a lot of the top kids planning to be doctors. At the first or second high school reunion I remember being rather shocked at how many lawyers there were.
This fits my experience. I work and live in a tech heavy area, so lots of STEM kids here. But that is different amongst my friends in other fields and different locations. Many more business, humanities, social science type kids.
My husband graduated from a major large university with a degree in CS ( mid-80’s). He was in the first class of CS graduates. He had no idea the field was about to explode. These folks have all done exceedingly well (timing) for many decades. This is unlikely to continue esp. with outsourcing. I ended up in tech upon graduation from college into a recession. Best thing that ever happened. Stayed in the field for about 10 years and loved it then changed fields. One by choice, one by chance.
When I see parents pushing for security and money for their kids, I do wonder. What is the motivation? Do they think it’s easier? More interesting? More stable? I don’t know about others but even highly paid execs have job losses, business breakdowns and all the rest. We have doctor friends (in radiology) whose jobs got outsourced and they had to move across country. As I get older, I think that nothing is guaranteed. You constantly have to relearn, refocus and make choices on the fly. It’s hard.
We’ve raised our kids to focus on soft skills like being co-operative, hard working to get it done, being good communicators etc. Whatever field they end up in, I hope these characteristics will help. IF they need to jump into another field they’ll also have these skills. We have talked about a lot of different fields with them over the years. Or better said, they have asked us about a lot of fields. We’ve tried to answer open and honestly. But we’ve also tried not to crush real interests. I told our youngest who’d like to be a surgeon that the medical field has a lot of structural issues and we talked about it once. But the objective wasn’t to stop kid from being a surgeon. It was to put some pluses and minuses in the basket.
Our kids will likely find work they enjoy. That’s the goal anyway. The one who spends nothing will likely have the most $. Though anything can happen.
Our kids have seen us start businesses, sell them, put them on hold, have bad months ( and years), they’ve seen us work for other people, and work for large and small companies. We’ve both worked from home for more than 15 years. . I think they know that sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it is very, very hard.
@lettiriggi IF I had to put money on the next “it” career, I’d say it’s robotics with AI.
I took all kind of courses after a BS degree, I had a certificate in AI from UCLA, but unfortunately that was in the mid 80s, the AI field was not as what it is today. You can be too early I think.
It depends on what you meant by “computer scientist” and “programming”. Computer scientists aren’t programmers, even though they program. AI does have the potential to replace a lot of programmers. It’s also likely that the skills of many of today’s programmers will be obsolete when quantum computing becomes a reality.
I admittedly don’t know too much about the various distinctions, computer science vs programming vs whatever else. It’s not my own field, and I may have used incorrect terms. But hopefully my (somewhat joking) point came through. I would assume, like most other fields, there are aspects that are more replaceable than others.
ETA, I see there have been further replies…I’ll back away now and let those in the know hash it out…
I’m a trained physicist (not a practicing one), but I still know a few people who work on quantum computing. There’s obviously no guarantee that if and when a new technology as fundamental as quantum computing will become a reality, but it should also be obvious that the future of computing doesn’t belong to classical computing. Each new generation of a single fabrication facility for semiconductor chips used in classical computers costs as least tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars (a single latest generation lithography machine costs a few hundred millions). More critically, we’re running into the absolute limits of one of the most fundamental laws of physics (again, due to quantum mechanics). The assumption of continued advances in lithographical technologies is at least as flawed as the assumption that quantum computing will materialize. Like in almost any industry that is the target of disruption, many people in that industry tend to be last ones to believe that any disruption is coming.
I never said that. I said the skills of many (not all) classic programmers will be obsolete. I agree that quantum computing isn’t going to completely replace classical computing, but in many important areas, it will.
There are no “many important” areas where quantum computing can replace general computing. Most of the programmers are basically plumbers that connect existing parts from the store.
And, of course, what the quantum computing people avoid to mention is, that quantum computing, if (and that is a huge IF) ever delivers, that will happen in > 20-30 years.
Just another fad, not the first, not the last.
P.S. Although not an expert in the field, I have to evaluate projects related to exploratory fields in computer science for my institution. I think I have a pretty good grasp what is the state, and the near (<10 years) future of quantum computing, as well as other exotic topics like neuromorphic computing etc.
Quantum computing isn’t a fad. Google, Amazon, Microsoft of the world are betting big financially on it. It’s an area some of the world’s best minds are working on it. Most of them are primarily physicists.
A lot of the AI jobs are data labeling and data cleaning jobs. Far fewer are the new model development jobs that need a PhD. It is possible that large scale AI may be monopolized or bought off by one or more of the cloud providers that offer it as a service in top of the cloud offering.
Anyway, AI is poorly understood, and we are using this empirically.
And regarding AI replacing programmers, even simple things like GPT-3 are very inefficient in the way they accomplish what they accomplish.
That’s the most primitive part of AI, even though it has the most applications currently. Data are obviously still important, but some of the most advanced AI technologies don’t even need much data (e.g. DeepMind’s AlphaGo).
). There’s much more emphasis on STEM these days, at least compared to when and where I grew up.
