My son will be graduating (EDIT: graduating high school) next year (2017). He’s interested in a couple different fields (computer science, computer engineering, and potentially I.T.). My self and his father are both mechanical engineers (as are most of our friends). We’re trying to find someone that our son can talk to about these careers, but neither my self or my husband know anyone that we could ask personally (and more importantly would actually be willing to do it).
The big thing we’re hoping to talk about is what a job might look like for my son and what skills he might need to focus on outside of school. My husband and I both remember stepping into the real world and realizing that it was very different than what we expected while in school.
Does anybody know of a site/service that’d connect myself and my son with someone in the fields he’s thinking about going into? I remember Google Helpouts and thought it would be a good path since video chat is convenient. However, they shut down last year (to my disappointment).
If anybody knows of another service, it’d be much appreciated.
This doesn’t exactly answer your question, but these days college students have more internship and research opportunities during college than when we were that age. That is one way they zero in on the specific areas they want to focus on, and also gain some of those real-world skills prior to graduation.
He could also look for a summer program experience in the CS field for next summer – that is one way my kids explored (and sometimes rejected) career options.
Does he really want to do these informational interviews, or are you pushing him as parents? He has to want to do this for them to be effective – it would sort of be a waste of everyone’s time if he isn’t the one driving the questions.
I think it’s a little bit of my pushing and partially his indecisiveness. We’ve talked about it a little bit and we both agree that it’d be good for him to have an idea of what he wants to do beyond just “computers”. It sounds like he thinks he’d be happy in any of the “computer” fields, but is curious about what specifics of each might be.
Pushing him to talk with someone is coming from my end, but he definitely has some questions that he’d ask if he had someone to ask them to (I’ve been hearing them for the past couple months).
Ok, for a curious high school student, rather than a college student nearing graduation…
http://cs10.org/sp16/ is an introductory CS course that gives a broad overview of the field, rather than being just an introductory programming course ( http://cs10.org/fa15/ is a past semester that has all of the things filled in in the schedule). http://cs61a.org is a CS course to start off the sequence for CS majors.
With respect to computer science, computer engineering, and information technology:
Computer science emphasizes design and development of computers and software.
Computer engineering may have more hardware emphasis, depending on the school.
Information technology is typically business-based and less technical; it is more focused on managing computers and software.
The increasing popularity of these majors these days means that many colleges do not have the capacity to take all interested students. Before selecting a college, he should check if he is directly admitted to the desired major. If not, he should check whether there is a high GPA requirement or competitive admission process to enter the desired major (do a web search for “[college] change major [major]”).
Perhaps you can suggest that he make his own account on these forums (sharing an account is not allowed and can confuse others) and ask questions. There are subforums for those majors:
The fact that he knows he wants some sort of computer field puts him way ahead of most of his peers. He’s a JUNIOR in high school. I think it’s unnecessary and could be counter-productive to try to nail down the precise nature of his life’s work now. When he gets to college and explores various courses, does internships, talks to professors and staff at the career center, then he’ll be able to narrow it down. Even after he starts his professional life, he may move into different areas of the computer field.
I have a hunch that your engineering mind is influencing your desire for precision in this process. For better or for worse, it’s important to be able to tolerate ambiguity when it comes to the early stages of career decisions.
Thanks for the feedback. I personally don’t have a problem with the ambiguity (I didn’t decide until my sophomore year of college). I agree that there is still plenty of time, but next fall will be here before we know it and my son has been talking about this a lot lately (almost to the point that he seems stressed about it).
I’m not going to push him to talk with anyone, but I want to present it as an option as something he might think about doing over the next couple months.
If he is a junior in high school, there is no need to stress out about career directions now (but he can look at the CS 10 course link above to see how interesting it is for him).
What you (as the parent) need to do now is figure out the constraints for your contribution to his college costs, and inform him of that before he makes his application list, so that he will not waste time applying to colleges with low or no chance of being affordable, and will have safeties which are definitely affordable as well as certain for admission. Each college web site has a net price calculator that can be used to estimate financial aid there.
The popularity of these majors does mean that he may have to apply to the desired major at many schools next fall.
Be critical of what people tell you about employment in the software and IT fields because the amount of misinformation is staggering. When your son mentions his major interests people will tell him that he’ll be showered with money after he graduates. Many companies offer high entry-level salaries, but he won’t be given a job on a silver platter simply because he put the words “Computer Science/Engineering” on his resume. Programming interviews, which are common for software development positions, require candidates to have a very solid understanding of their subject matter to ensure success. Of course putting together a good resume is imperative.
Otherwise he doesn’t have to delve too deep in career options since he’s in high school. He may want to try out learning programming to see how interested he is in it. Starting to learn it in high school can be helpful since learning the basics in one to two semesters is pretty tough.
When your son mentions his major interests people will tell him that he’ll be showered with money after he graduates.
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This is one of my biggest concerns. Nobody talks about how “it’s a good field” or “that seems right (or wrong)” - they always mention the money. While money is definitely important, there is sooooo much more to a field than simply making a lot of money.
When my son was a sophomore in high school I asked my brother if he could do a week of job shadowing. (At this point he knew Visual Basic and Java and had taken the Comp Sci AP.) They actually ended up putting him to work and paid him with a (modest) Amazon gift card. He got a better idea of the things he might like to learn. He learned Linux, and spent some time going through MIT’s open courseware as well as doing fun stuff like modding games. The company ended up hiring him for the next two summers and he worked part time during the school year as well.
There are downturns in every field, but I don’t think computers are going away. If you are flexible and can grow with the market the jobs will be there.
Did your husband or you do any internships or co-ops while in college? If not, then maybe that’s why work seemed a lot different from what you expected.
I don’t think you need to worry. Your son is a high school junior. When he’s in college, encourage him to do some internships or co-ops and he’ll get a taste for what a “real job” is like.
Frankly, students often change their majors. Many who start in one E discipline change to another. Who knows where he’ll end up.
My DD was in a similar situation and to be honest still is. She is a junior getting a CE degree with possible dual major in Eng Lit. In HS, her first thoughts were library science to information systems to computer science to CE. She does not know what she wants to do when she graduates. She has done internships vs coops so she can see different environments. So far, a hardware startup and then at one of the oldest banks in the US. She also did a nonpaid program with Google last summer developing apps. Our thoughts are keep yourself open to new areas, try all opportunities, until something fits. She now knows CS is more her thing over hardware. For her future, possible just working a job, MBA, law school, technical librarian have all been mentioned.
Moral of this story, pick a direction but keep yourself open and try new things. Very few kids in HS know what they want to do but pick a direction that fits their talents.
I don’t mind people who are mainly interested in money because it can lead to more sensible employees. Many companies, startups in particular, take advantage of a passion for CS and impart that programming/work should be your life. What bothers me more is that people think new grads will be given high-paying jobs just by virtue of existing.