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0 pointsWillfire1910y ago0 comments

Hey I'm just an undergraduate student right now, but if you're worried about job prospects, you should study Computer Graphics and Computer Vision. I find those fields to be way more math intensive than web programming, so it may be more up your ally. Plus, there's plenty of demand for positions in those fields.

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fsk10y ago

You're an undergraduate now, so I'll give a lesson in how the actual job market works.

You get a job using languages/tools X, Y, and Z. When you apply for a new job, they'll screen your resume based on what languages and tools you used in the past, and use that as the basis for deciding whether to interview you or not. If the job ad asks for W, Y, and Z, that's close enough to X, Y, and Z, so you might get an interview. If the job ad asks for W, V, and U, no interview for you.

That is completely the wrong way to hire people, but almost everyone does this.

When you're a recent grad, people will hire you even without a perfect experience match, especially if you graduated from a highly ranked school.

Once you get a couple of jobs with X, Y, and Z, you'll probably keep taking jobs that use X, Y, and Z, because those will tend to make you the best offers. What happens when demand for X, Y, and Z dries up due to changing technology fads?

I'm at the point where I have a lot of experience in languages that are no longer used or are no longer trendy. That isn't seen as an asset, it's seen as a negative. People say "Why should I hire you FSK, when I could hire a recent college grad?" So my experience has no market value. Plus, age discrimination is a factor. (After you've been around the block a few times, you're less of a pushover, which is seen as a bad thing.)

That's why programmer is a bad career choice. Your experience loses its market value very quickly. You will do very well initially, but then you hit a wall and it's over. You have to move to management, start your own business, or always be chasing the latest tech fads. If you want to pad your resume with a new tech/language, do a project in it, even if it isn't the right choice for your employer's needs and you'll mess it up because you haven't used it before.

Computer vision may be "hot" now, but that's no guarantee of any demand 5-10 years from now. "Data Scientist" is also a hot item right now, is closer to my actual background (lots of database and data warehouse work, and lots of financial statistics and analysis), and I still can't get any interviews for "Data Scientist" jobs.