r/cscareerquestions • u/foreversingle- • 7h ago
Student What is a career in CS like?
Im going into uni next year and choosing between CS and mechatronics engineering. The point of this post is not to see what the job market/employability is, but rather to gauge my interest in this field.
What sort of work do you guys do? What would I do outside of uni curriculum? I heard a lot about building personal projects, but what does that entail? Creating an app as a hobby for example? What are some career/job options and what sort of work do you do in said job? Whether you're a student or grad, whats your daily life looking like?
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u/diablo1128 Tech Lead / Senior Software Engineer 7h ago
Being a SWE is about solving business problems with code. This is a team sport, so to speak. You are expected to work with a team of SWEs to solve big problems.
If you think you will get a task and can sit in a dimly lit basement by yourself for a week "hacking" out a solution then you are mistaken. This is not the job in the vast majority of companies. There will be meetings and discussions along the way.
Communication skills and knowing your audience are important skills to have.
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u/daimon_proc 7h ago
Not going to lie anything technical is completely saturated: electrical engineering, CS, mechatronics, etc. Any of these fields you will have a difficult time finding a job in US.
Civil from what I have heard is better in terms of employment.
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u/two_three_five_eigth 7h ago
What is mechatronics?
Realistically, if you're lucky enough to have a job, you're an "AI Prompt Engineer".
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u/Shad0wAVM 7h ago
Mechatronics is a mix of ME and EE, with a sprinkle of CS. It focuses heavily in robotics, control, computer vision, etc...
Honestly not as in demand as many think. With Digital Twins and Simulation work being done by companies such as Nvidia, most of the robotics work can be done by CS people. Just look at companies such as Boston Dynamics, they are mostly looking for CS.
Very few companies actually develop robotics hardware and the job offer is tiny. Talking now about Nvidia, it seems they want to replace all engineers, just look at the absurd amount of papers they are releasing in simulation and physical AI applications.
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u/Yoiiru 5h ago edited 5h ago
Depressing tbh, and now with AI it's existential depression. I don't code much these days, mostly AI prompting, or debugging (and then management going "why can't AI do this? Why do you need to debug manually???")
If you're super passionate about CS and AI, then you'll be frustrated with the bureaucracy and management and, unless you work for yourself or smaller company, chances are many (often stupid and technically ignorant) decisions come top down. Project managers that ping you 3x a day on "is this done yet?" and then "status update?". Your internal business clients don't know what they want and you have to figure out what they want and tell them. Really depends on the company.
I agree with the comments that direct towards the engineering route. The self-learning bar for pure software development has lowered a lot with AI. An education that is adjacent to but also transitional to CS might be more valuable. We still don't know what the market will look like in 4-5 years when you graduate.
Many of your questions are "depends on the company". I heard a lot about "personal projects" too back then but I never did any. The school projects were enough for me. A lot of companies don't care about your passion projects unless it's directly transferable to work related skills. For reference I work in finance.
Overall for me: Pay is decent, job stress is average. For the average guy, it's an average job to pay the bills. As long as you have some endurance in you and like it enough it's alright.
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u/Proper_Knowledge6361 1h ago
I find that looking for smaller companies that aren't a startup backed by venture capital and is actually profitable and stable is the best option right now. I found a very small company that had been around for 20+ years and they need to hire in new people as a few are about to retire but want the company to continue without selling it and making everyone lose their job. That's the jackpot honestly.
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u/seventeenninetytoo 7h ago
My daily life? I search for jobs. I apply to jobs. I do full interview loops of five to seven rounds each. I lose the offer to another candidate. I watch my savings shrink.
If you go into this field, this will be your life once or twice each decade. You won't fully understand how stressful it is until you experience it while having a mortgage to pay and a family to feed.
When I have work, I enjoy it very much. The job boils down to understanding some domain, understanding a business, understanding the problems that need to be solved, and then turning that into technical solutions. It involves a lot of creative problem solving, which I enjoy.
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u/connorjpg Software Engineer 7h ago
> the point of this post is not to see what the job market/employability is…
Tbf, that’s the only thing that matters when going to college. College is an investment, but only if you get a degree is something that is valued. Unless you are completely covered in your tuition, I would consider the ROI of your degree more than anything. Pick something that you are content with that will provide you a good living.
I would do Electrical or Mechanical Engineering. You could go into CS with either of those degrees as you will likely be coding (EE will be a bit more), but you aren’t stuck in CS.
Idk what mechatronics engineering would be, but I’m assuming ME would encapsulate it. Meaning having a ME degree would allow you to do mechatronics and also, have a wider range of career possibilities.
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u/Ours15 6h ago
If you start majoring in CS now, in 4 years you will get to be underemployed with minimum savings. You also get to read comments on this sub about how in 12 to 24 months, CS will experience another boom rivalling 2021, which has been repeated since 2023. By the time you graduate, it's highly likely both OpenAI and Anthropic have gone bankrupt. But that won't stop this sub from coping about how CS is the best career ever, and if you work hard and are passionate, a job will fall to your lap no problem.
If that's the "career" you are into, then yeah, go ahead and get that CS degree. But please, I suggest you go the engineering route.
!remindme 5 years.
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u/lhorie 5h ago edited 5h ago
Early career is pretty much get a ticket that states something needs to be done, then do it, stand ups to say what you're working on, rinse and repeat. Do it enough times to be more independent with tasks.
The "something needs to be done" can be implementing some self-contained feature, or a bug fix, typically.
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u/Proper_Knowledge6361 1h ago
I find it really fun and fulfilling but it's extremely stressful. You have to balance your velocity otherwise the company will continue making your work load larger. It pays well for a reason and that reason is it's stressful, you have to actually be smart and quick and your communication skills are probably the most important skill to have as communication to non technical staff or clients is extremely important. It's certainly not just about writing code.
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u/bluegrassclimber 7h ago edited 7h ago
A career in CS is a lot of fun. Be prepared for change and be prepared to adapt. This isn't something like carpentry where you can just be building furniture / renovating kitchens and it's the same thing over and over again.
Tech stacks evolve quickly, with AI they are evolving in ways that are impossible to predict, but IMO, (hot take warning), AI is not a threat, it's just going to increase the layers of complexity on our already complex workflow ecosystems, which if embraced, will keep software just as lucrative as it's always been. But that means working hard, thinking outside the box, and NOT just being a prompt monkey.
We just continuously build on top of what's already been built. It's cool. But yeah, if you want something stable, shoot for carpentry lol.
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u/CautiousCactusCat 7h ago
It’s over saturated and stressful.