r/cscareers

So, next year I'm going to college, and I've always been interested in Cybersecurity. But for the last few weeks, I've been researching its job market, and it was awful to see how bad the market is; seriously, people with years of experience and technical skills are not getting jobs.

Because of this, I am genuinely scared to go into a CS major,

I really need help. What should I do?

Im 16 right now 2 years until my high school is done and from my early childhood i wanted to do something related to CS so in the AI world will AI take the jobs of CS grads.

Software Engineers Data Analyst Data Scientist and all will AI ever replace it ?

Hello, I would like honest feedback and an opinion about the critical decision I have to make in less than a day.

​I am currently trying to choose a university, and I'm torn between two contrasting options. For simplicity, let's call them University A and University B. They are vastly different, and each comes with distinct pros and cons.

​University A:

I haven't seen a single positive review about its computer science program, students say the curriculum is outdated and lectures lack practical application. However, its degree carries notable prestige. On the downside, this program is intensely demanding and would leave me virtually no time for side projects, hackathons, or skill development, relying entirely on heavy theory and mathematics.

​University B:

On the other hand, it is viewed as a lower-tier institution with older facilities and a less rigorous academic reputation. However, it would give me the breathing space needed to build practical skills, take supplementary courses, participate in hackathons, and actively develop my portfolio.

In short:

​Option A offers prestige and a strong diploma.

​Option B offers time, flexibility, and the freedom to pursue self-directed study.

​Complicating matters is family pressure: my relatives strongly want me to choose the prestigious option, especially since I achieved high scores on my entrance exams.

​Yet, I worry that a purely theoretical path will leave me feeling stagnant and lacking a real-world portfolio when I graduate. I've heard advice from many developers suggesting that a university won't teach you everything anyway, and that success in this field comes down to self-reliance and building things on your own.

​Since other alternatives are financially out of reach for me and my family, I am restricted to these two choices.

​What do you think is the best path forward? Should I lean into the prestige of traditional theory, or prioritize self-driven practical experience?

Thank you in advance.

In my senior year of hs now and really interested in getting a bachelor’s in cs to become a software engineer or something within that industry.

I really enjoy coding and don’t struggle with mathematics at all. The lifestyle is something I really like too.

However, people say the market is tougher than ever to get a job and hold onto it throughout their careers. This scares me, and the last thing I want is to waste time and money on something that I could have avoided.

Is it that bad or are people just over exaggerating it? Are there any other jobs within this industry that are also worth pursuing?

Okay, so I know the market is tough (for all industries).

I reached interview stage 5/6 with a firm as ML engineer, where I just found I failed the programming task. One of the key points was that I didn't perform enough data analysis.

I agree that I overlooked a field they were looking for, but, my god, it's quite crushing after this much effort after I made several models with different params etc, did lots of evaluation and produced a report of many pages.

Are other industries this selective and brutal? Like, I know some structural engineers who danced around job offers in the past couple of months, and can literally negotiate salaries with the competition. These all are 3 stage inteeview processes at MOST AND the entire processes take like 2-3 weeks.

Why the hell does every goddamn CS role have a 6 stage process with multiple tasks, interviews etc.???? Especially ones that take months to process. What happened??? It makes the barrier to entry ludicrously high.

Cheers for any feedback!

Anyone else feel like CS has become so oversaturated and luck-based that they’re considering law school or med school instead? I know both are difficult paths, but sometimes it feels like there’s a clearer path to a career than grinding LeetCode and hoping you get lucky in this job market.

Anyone else thinking about switching paths after CS?

I recently graduated from an engineering college with a degree in Computer Science, and I’m currently without a job.

I have a decent understanding of core CS subjects, along with knowledge of AI, backend development, and related technologies. I’ve also built some decent projects and genuinely enjoy learning and building things.

But something happened recently that honestly messed with my head.

There was a guy in my college who had backlogs. From what I’ve seen, he struggled with very basic programming concepts like traversing an array, didn’t really know SQL, and had very weak communication skills.

Yet somehow, he managed to land a Data Analyst role at a big company.

And I'm sitting here wondering:

What am I doing wrong?

I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve the opportunity. Good for him. But seeing this made me question everything I’ve been doing.

I’ve spent so much time learning, building projects, improving my technical skills, and trying to become job-ready. Yet I’m still unemployed.

At this point, I’m starting to feel like maybe I’m overthinking everything, maybe I’m preparing too much, or maybe I’m simply failing at something that other people figured out.

Honestly, I feel lost.

What should I actually do now?

Should I stop learning new technologies and focus entirely on interview preparation and applications?

Should I target Python Developer/AI/Backend roles?

Should I improve my fundamentals first, or am I already technically good enough to start aggressively applying?

I’d genuinely appreciate advice from people who have been through this phase.

Because right now, I don't need another motivational quote.

I need to understand what I'm doing wrong and what I should change.

or should i QUIT?

I have 6+ years in trucking, debating if i obtaining a bachelors degree in supply chain management from WGU would be worth it to pair my experience in the field in order to get out of the driver seat and into a office chair with normal 9-5 hours.

I’ve been a SWE at the same large company for 10 years and a Senior SWE for about 4.
I like my job/team and have good WLB, so there’s no urgency to leave, but I’ve been considering testing the market to learn new things, make more money, continue growing, and see what other opportunities are out there. After 10 years without interviewing, though, my interview skills are definitely rusty.
I was thinking of spending ~12 weeks working through NeetCode/LeetCode and refreshing system design, then doing some lower stakes interviews before applying to companies I’m most interested in.
For other experienced engineers who interviewed after a long tenure at one company, how did you prepare? Is ~12 weeks reasonable, and how would you split your time between LeetCode, system design, and other prep? Stay where I’m at?

Basically I'm from tier 3 college and a I'm currently going in 2nd yr

Basically I'm completely lost about what to do from now everyone is saying do dsa Full stack and many of my friends who're in good clgs took batches of deep learning data science and another blah blah things 😭😭

So I don't know from where to start right now should I go with full stack or not or try another feild as well cuz everyone says that Full stack is dead and their is no scope in future

And please suggest me any roadmap what to doo

I don't know anything 😭😭

I wanna understand the extent of HOW BAD Is It out there, really. I know the good old days of learn to code and get a job are over, but Is It AS BAD?

Early on , I thought getting hired was about proving you already know how to build everything from scratch.

​The deeper I got into interviews and projects, the more obvious it became, nobody expects a fresh grad to know their exact enterprise stack day one. They are just filtering for adaptability and core problem solving instincts. If you can break down ambiguous problems and learn fast, the rest is just reading docs and adapting on the fly .

​Do you think universities do a bad job explaining this to students, or is it something you just have to figure out yourself?

What's your opinion lmk.

New CS grad. I got an offer at a big defense contractor. Decent starting pay, good job security, and i got referred in by family so theres a relationship i really dont wanna mess up.

The way im leaning is i kinda wanna turn it down and keep looking. i was always going for two things, software / web dev, and something remote or at least hybrid, and this job is neither. its entry level and not really the technical work i pictured, and its fully on site. i'll still take an on site job for the right kind of work, remote isnt a dealbreaker, its just more up my alley. this one just misses both things i actually wanted.

but heres what keeps me up. if i turn it down i could be sitting here for months with nothing, and i got zero real experience on my resume yet, so that gamble feels way scarier than it would if i had something to fall back on. so i dont wanna just say no on principle either.

and if i do take it, i feel like i gotta stay at least a year so it actually looks right on my resume and i dont make the person who referred me look bad or burn any bridges. thats a real commitment for a job i already think im gonna enjoy way less than the field i was actually hoping to focus on.

so its like, take it and lock myself into a year of something off target, or turn it down and maybe stare at no offers for months. the real fear underneath all of it is getting stuck, cause where you start kinda sets the story people read later.

for anyone whos been at a big contractor or started in a role outside the field they wanted, how hard was it to pivot after? did staying a year or two trap you or open more doors than it closed? and if youve held out as a new grad in this market, was it worth the wait or did it just drag on?

im not asking for the perfect job or anything, id just rather have one that hits at least one of the things im looking for instead of neither. open to any and all thoughts and advice people have for me.

My lovely nerds...

We are not asking people to pretend the CS job market is fine. It isn't. We are also not asking people to sugarcoat difficult experiences.

What we are asking is that people separate what they know from what they observe, what they think it means, and what they predict.

"I've applied to 300 jobs and received 2 interviews." = Experience / Data

"Junior postings in my area commonly ask for experience." = Observation / Pattern

"I think AI is reducing entry-level opportunities." = Interpretation

"Junior CS jobs are dead." = Prediction

Those are not interchangeable statements. Putting the wrong one in the wrong place is fucking people up here.

So I wrote this to teach y'all how Rule 7 will work a bit more in the future, as I've just tweaked it again.

We have had trouble with comments that take one person's experience, an assumption about the market, or a feeling about where things are headed and present it as a "universal fact". That creates a hell of a lot of confusing noise for people who are here because they genuinely need career information.

You are absolutely allowed to say the market is bad.
You are absolutely allowed to say you think things are getting worse.
You are absolutely allowed to disagree with someone else's assessment.

What you are not encouraged to do is turn uncertainty into certainty, prediction into fact, or frustration into a verdict on everyone else's career.

So:

Don't promote a prediction to production as though it were verified data. A hypothesis is a hypothesis until the evidence supports it.

Tell us what you know. Tell us what you've experienced. Tell us what you think it means. Tell us what you expect next. Guide people to the best path if you know it.

Just don't collapse those into one sentence, use them to judge others, doompost, or act like a little bug helplessly on its back while encouraging everyone else to turn over too.

And as always: if your comment doesn't help someone figure out what to do next, consider whether you need to post it at all.

I want to get a 2 year degree bc I’m already 30 and frankly I don’t want to go to university for 4 years. I want to have a degree and maybe once I get a job that utilizes that degree I will continue education, but right now I’m working as a server and I don’t wanna do it anymore.

I know for example you can become a nurse by going to school for 2 years or less and get your associate degree in nursing, then you can get a better paying job. Is there an equivalent of that to be a software engineer? If so what is that degree called??

I recently graduated in May. I have a few projects I did in class but other than that I don’t have anything on my resume. I don’t know what projects to build and which field/domain to go in. My future looks so bleak that I can’t figure out what to do?
If you’re currently working professionals can you suggest some projects to build my resume to get hired

Hey, I'm R (for anonymity) and I'm going into my third year of university as a CS major. I've landed my first internship through a family friend connection because I couldn't get one applying on my own (which I'm already embarassed and demotivated from) and they've had me doing nothing 9 to 5 but self-paced learning. I haven't been onboarded or anything. Is this normal for interns or is it just a company-specific issue. I'm not sure what to expect and this is making me not want to pursue CS in the future as it seems so dull and daunting.

I’m a new CS grad and I got the offer to work at a US government defense contractor company.

My caveat is that I was always so keen on trying to land a remote job. I’m not sure if I should take the offer which has good job security along with it, or keep looking for what I know will make me happier (a hybrid or remote job).

I know it’s a lot more competitive, but it’s also worth mentioning that the government job I got offered isn’t exactly the area of computer science I was hoping to get into either.

Some will say get the job and leave if I find something I wanted more, but I don’t want to cut ties (or any bad blood) with this company or people who referred me.