Is CS going to become an overcrowded industry?

College Majors Math/Computer Science Majors
1

Basically, it seems like everyone talks about how CS is a growing industry that needs more people and has good pay, etc. Now it almost seems to be a bandwagon for a lot of people (yeah, there are people who are really interested in it, but there are also people who are like “well I dunno what to major in but everyone talks about CS so I’ll do that” and they succeed at it just as well are interested people.)

So when do you think that the increasing number of people who want to work in CS will overcrowd the industry, if ever? (I’m not basing this on some post I saw, just what I think I’ve noticed, so maybe I’m dead wrong.)

2

I’ve seen enough cycles of people saying “Field X needs lots of workers and pays well, everyone should get the education necessary for it!” followed by so many people going into the field that there’s then a glut of workers, leading to wage stagnation if not wage drops, and in some cases even an effective collapse of the job market—cf. nursing, college faculty, forensic science…) that I have the exact same worry.

3

You do not know in advance how the industry will be doing four or five years from now.

The computer industry has had some big booms and busts recently. It can be a matter of luck as to whether your graduation year is in a boom or bust year.

4

Like any other field, it has its ups and downs. At the moment, most jobs are of the mediocre variety, with relatively low wages, but there are also very nice and high-paying jobs that are there for the taking for those who need them - overall, that is what I would call a pretty good market.

You really can’t predict an industry one university education ahead (4-5 years) or, more importantly, one career ahead (40-50 years). If you’re looking for a safe bet for career choices, CS is quite a solid choice. It’s versatile (you can do jobs in a wide variety of industries with minimal extra training) and there are a lot of places where your services could be needed. The field has many flaws that you should probably spend time researching during your years in school, but it’s not a “hot” major that will go out of style by the time you’re done either.

Think of it this way: if your main career choice doesn’t pan out, where else are the skills you learn in college valuable? For CS, the answer is that it’s useful in quite a lot of places.

5

Every field has it’s flaws. Name one that doesn’t.

6

Short answer: Yes

Long answer: Every year, like every other majors out there, we produce way more than enough for a specific major. In fact, if we go solely by numbers and bls.gov as our statistics, we will have more than enough computer related majors out there in the next four years. This does not include H1 visas who also takes a noticeable chunk and people who didn’t major in CS which also make a noticeable chunk in the field.

So is CS going to become an overcrowded industry? Well, we never know the future but if you want to know just by numbers, then yes. But then if we think like that, we have to admit that pretty much EVERY major is overcrowded.

So please major in CS if you love it. If you are doing solely for the money, then I’m sorry but your dreams will be shattered. I personally think it’s better to major in computer engineering as it’s easier to transition from an engineer to software developer than vice versa.
Also, before anyone rants about how “CS is booming”, please look at all other natural sciences. Biology pays like 10 dollars an hour right outa undergrad. Chemistry pays 9 dollars an hour right outa undergrad. Math and physics gets paid like 11 to 13 dollars an hour right outa undergrad. These are all the “sciences” just like CS.Why would you expect CS to be any different in the near future? Overcrowded = less wage. =4 years in higher education, they realize that working right out of high school was a better prospect for them>


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Anyways, all majors right now are overcrowded as it seems like every able-bodied person is attending college. A few majors out there are not but they are usually the very obscure field.
I personally don’t understand why everyone opts for CS. I mean, in average, chemical engineering, aerospace engineering, and even computer engineering pays much better right outa undergrad. And then ofc there is the medical field which pays far better (and has a much higher job security)…

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btw…
CS is NOT the study of “computers” and "programming. I hope this would clear any misunderstandings before you guys decide to major in it.
CS is closer to a branch called (and originated from such) “Applied Mathematics”. CS is the study of a scientific approach to a computation.

7

I find people in the CS forums often are concerned about H1 visas while people in other forums claim it is almost impossible for intls to get H1 visas. What’s the real situation?

8

@AccCreate Does CS pay about the same amount as bio/chem/physics students right out of undergrad or is the base pay somewhat different?

9

The good news is not everyone can jump on the bandwagon.

10

I disagree with Computer Engineering is better than CS comment. I majored in Computer a Engineering. If you listen to the stock market, most of these hardware companies are doing badly. More layoffs. Qualcomm recently announced big layoff. Broadcom was bought out by another company. Intel didn’t do so well. So on and so forth. Defense companies are 80% software, they are the ones that usually have more hardware need. I’m only aware of Nest as a hardware company that is hiring, even though Google has selective hiring now.

11

From my own experience, DrGoogle is right on the money. Even companies that are hardware companies need far more software work than hardware work, with more than half their engineers working on writing software.

Keep in mind, you don’t just need software for whatever hardware you are building - you also need it for general everyday applications that have to do with logistics, IT, operations, and just about everything else in a company that can be automated and that is unique enough that there isn’t software for sale to do the job. Not to mention that for software projects, beyond a relatively small (to scale) cost for computers, the biggest expense is the programmer’s salary. Hardware needs significantly more overhead than that, which makes companies less willing to take on hardware projects, and hence less jobs available.

12

@MasterLillyclaw Fortunately as for now, no. CS salary is luckily nowhere near the poor salaries of the other sciences. But I’m just laying out the possibilities… cause no one knows the future

Anyways, I was thinking of embedded software engineering when I talked about computer engineering. The purely hardware side of computer engineering like DrGoogle said is not doing so well (and judging by bls.gov, it seems that such will continue being the case -check out also electrical engineering in bls if you don’t believe me-

In fact, as much as I hate to admit, pretty much all fields (even engineering) except certain medical fields are not having the best days in this economy.
I want to inform you, that there are countries in which minimum wage is much less for a similarly qualified engineer. For instance, South Korea, a first world country has a minimum wage of almost half of USA. If I was the head of a company, I would send my company there. Now, this forgets the fact that there are even “cheaper” countries in the world in which the minimum wage is less than a dollar. Not every engineer needs to have a broad education, he/she just needs to know enough to create products. Add in the fact that there are extremely talented engineers all around the world and wallah, offshoring :slight_smile:

That said, the matter with H1 visas are not something to ignore. As much as I hate to admit, in most top CS universities, an OVERwhelming majority (feels more like 9 out of 10) are either asian-americans (which thankfully are americans) or internationals. The problem is, out of the two, it feels that the more stand on the latter side which means even in our domestic universities, some of the most talented CS individuals are foreigners.

Fortunately for now, I believe the average job offers for CS majors in competitive universities are around 2-4, which is extremely good in this economy.
I just think that such might not be the case once the hype crashes temporarily (like the dotcom bubble).

That said, hey, I’m a CS & Math person. I have no clue how the other fields work.They say the grass is always greener on the other side. And I attend a university in which an overwhelming majority of engineers go to Wallstreet so… :confused:

13

It may feel like 9 out of 10 if you are used to a very white (or white and small numbers of non-white minorities) environment and encounter a situation where Asians are a fairly large minority group, but actual demographics of schools like MIT are not that way.



School          % intl          % Asian of domestic
MIT              9.6%           26.6%
Stanford         8.0%           20.3%
CMU             19.3%           28.5%
Berkeley        12.9%           46.7%
Illinois        15.4%           17.8%
Cornell          9.9%           18.1%
Washington       5.7%           27.2%
14

Regarding H-1B visas, the ugly fact is that most of them are taken up by lower paying outsourcing companies, so the companies hiring H-1B visa people at high pay rates for their own internal work legitimately complain about the shortage (to them) of the visas.

http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx
http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2014-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx

A sensible reform would be to reduce access to the H-1B visas by outsourcing companies.

15

I’ve worked in embedded software before. I wouldn’t really recommend it - there aren’t many job openings there, and you generally need a higher degree. The fact is that C code is stable, runs as intended for its useful life span (decades), and only needs to be updated once in a blue moon. How many engineers do you really think are needed to upkeep something like that? Not many. Usually just a handful of people who really just do mundane testing to make sure everything is in order.

Right now, CS is doing fantastic relative to engineering. There are more CS jobs than every other engineering field combined (I can say from personal experience that my CS offers out of college were substantially more lucrative than my engineering offers, which I had to work WAY harder to obtain). Globalization is an ever-present threat, of course, but frankly there’s nowhere you can really go to escape it. The US has it pretty good compared to anywhere else, as far as employment goes.

16

@ucbalumnus u sure that’s the ratio for CS majors and not the whole university? Wow, it really doesn’t feel like that for some reason. Ya, I guess it’s cause I never seen so much of a minority take quite a chunk.
For some reason, I feel it’s way more than that especially in CS classes.

and well for now, CS is doing fantastic. I think everyone knows that. The thing is, we don’t know if it will be in the near future.
Hype trains are rather scary. I’m not an optimistic guy and hey, grass is always greener on the other side of the road.
I constantly feel engineering is a safer option than CS.

17

From my own experience I will say that engineering is a great career… when you’re employed. If you find yourself out of a job, however, whether you lose one or if you’re just a student who has yet to receive a full time offer, it’s a pretty horrid field (or set of fields might be more accurate?) to be in. CS, moving between jobs is reasonable and, in some circles, encouraged.

18

Everyone who says they are going to be a CS major can’t hack the course work required, so some also switch to other majors.

19

Those are percentages for the whole university. Demographics of specific departments are not readily publicly available.

However, interest in CS seems to be almost universal at Stanford, since yearly enrollment in CS 106A (the introductory course for CS majors there) is approaching the size of a year’s undergraduate class.

20

@ucbalumnus Oh great… cough I want to work in CS and one of the colleges I’m applying to is Stanford cough