Are computer science jobs well paid?
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This field is a good one to get into in my opinion. I took it at A level, and it was difficult, however the skills you learn can be used all over the world. Programming is a universal language, and there are an abundance of jobs available at many major companies such as Twitter/Google ect as well as having the option of free lancing and creating software for companies/organizations. If you enjoy it, go for it.
Original post by History98
Link?
http://www.geek.com/articles/news/facebook-beats-google-on-salary-and-employee-satisfaction-20101119/
Also they used to put the 90k figure on their careers page but they have changed it now.
Original post by ch0llima
Be wary of generalising. I'm on the graduate scheme at a "large employer" and earn just under £30k (I also fall into the "niche area" bracket) - I don't have a "proper CS" degree and neither do most of the new grads, in fact only three out of the 52 hired went to Oxbridge and most of us have "IT"/"Computing" degrees.
Honestly, it's only the conceited City employers that really care about these things - they'd hire a trained monkey if it studied at Oxford and had a rich daddy. Even multi-national FTSE 100 juggernauts will hire someone from an ex-poly if they impress at interview and are right for the role.
Be wary of generalising. I'm on the graduate scheme at a "large employer" and earn just under £30k (I also fall into the "niche area" bracket) - I don't have a "proper CS" degree and neither do most of the new grads, in fact only three out of the 52 hired went to Oxbridge and most of us have "IT"/"Computing" degrees.
Honestly, it's only the conceited City employers that really care about these things - they'd hire a trained monkey if it studied at Oxford and had a rich daddy. Even multi-national FTSE 100 juggernauts will hire someone from an ex-poly if they impress at interview and are right for the role.
I actually disagree about the City, they don't care about Oxbridge as much as they do about your programming and analytical skills and that becomes apparent once you get to interview. Some of the most clever engineers and developers I know work for hedge funds and banks building low latency complex trading systems, it isn't something a trained monkey, be it from Oxford or Oxford Brookes, could do. The trained monkeys usually end up on back office accounting systems and in glorified call centres after a few years and are usually the first to be let go when the bank suddenly decides it needs to cut 7000 jobs because there's a recession on.
The reason I am skeptical of non-CS degree titles is because some of them really have very little CS content and just teach basic OO programming and focus on coding in a language along with pointless filler like HCI, Web Design or Project Management rather than the principles of the subject and refuse to touch more math heavy topics such as information retrieval or security, and so grads from these courses may be able to write a bog standard winform but would struggle to design a neural network to filter spam. In the examples you give, I am pretty sure the grad would have demonstrated some ability to learn through work ex and have some understanding of the basics of CS.
Original post by ch0llima
Well, where do I start?
He sets up this vacuous ego-stroking platform, shafting his friends and stealing their ideas in the process. He and his merry band of techies continually roll out unnecessary and undesirable new features, forcing it upon an exhausted userbase who don't want these things and ignoring all protest or criticism. Oh, and all this while flogging your personal data for buttons.
He then takes this cluster**** onto the stock exchange at an absurdly inflated price with no clear business plan or growth strategy. He also treated his investors with total contempt by turning up late to a business meeting wearing a hoodie and jeans. Unprofessional and disrespectful.
Honestly, he's too arrogant to step aside and let a proper businessman take the helm. Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped aside and brought in the non-technical outsider Eric Schmidt as CEO, somehow I don't think Google would be this successful without some kind of pragmatic and experienced leadership.
Facebook is in real danger of ending up like MySpace - it'll still exist, but it's not "the cool thing" to do, its userbase will dwindle and stagnate then it'll be bought over by someone else looking to make a fast buck. Its share price is tanking and the IPO was too high, even MZ himself has lost something like $650m in recent weeks.
Yeah, I know two people with a 2.1 from the same course. One had work experience, one didn't - guess who is now employed on £28k and who is still looking and applying for jobs below his skill level? Work experience is essential or you'll sink without trace no matter how good your academic credentials are.
Be wary of generalising. I'm on the graduate scheme at a "large employer" and earn just under £30k (I also fall into the "niche area" bracket) - I don't have a "proper CS" degree and neither do most of the new grads, in fact only three out of the 52 hired went to Oxbridge and most of us have "IT"/"Computing" degrees.
Honestly, it's only the conceited City employers that really care about these things - they'd hire a trained monkey if it studied at Oxford and had a rich daddy. Even multi-national FTSE 100 juggernauts will hire someone from an ex-poly if they impress at interview and are right for the role.
He sets up this vacuous ego-stroking platform, shafting his friends and stealing their ideas in the process. He and his merry band of techies continually roll out unnecessary and undesirable new features, forcing it upon an exhausted userbase who don't want these things and ignoring all protest or criticism. Oh, and all this while flogging your personal data for buttons.
He then takes this cluster**** onto the stock exchange at an absurdly inflated price with no clear business plan or growth strategy. He also treated his investors with total contempt by turning up late to a business meeting wearing a hoodie and jeans. Unprofessional and disrespectful.
Honestly, he's too arrogant to step aside and let a proper businessman take the helm. Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped aside and brought in the non-technical outsider Eric Schmidt as CEO, somehow I don't think Google would be this successful without some kind of pragmatic and experienced leadership.
Facebook is in real danger of ending up like MySpace - it'll still exist, but it's not "the cool thing" to do, its userbase will dwindle and stagnate then it'll be bought over by someone else looking to make a fast buck. Its share price is tanking and the IPO was too high, even MZ himself has lost something like $650m in recent weeks.
Yeah, I know two people with a 2.1 from the same course. One had work experience, one didn't - guess who is now employed on £28k and who is still looking and applying for jobs below his skill level? Work experience is essential or you'll sink without trace no matter how good your academic credentials are.
Be wary of generalising. I'm on the graduate scheme at a "large employer" and earn just under £30k (I also fall into the "niche area" bracket) - I don't have a "proper CS" degree and neither do most of the new grads, in fact only three out of the 52 hired went to Oxbridge and most of us have "IT"/"Computing" degrees.
Honestly, it's only the conceited City employers that really care about these things - they'd hire a trained monkey if it studied at Oxford and had a rich daddy. Even multi-national FTSE 100 juggernauts will hire someone from an ex-poly if they impress at interview and are right for the role.
Please don't say you judged this based on the movie.
Which is 90% fiction.
But the rest of what you write i agree with.
Original post by Mrkingpenguin
http://www.geek.com/articles/news/facebook-beats-google-on-salary-and-employee-satisfaction-20101119/
Also they used to put the 90k figure on their careers page but they have changed it now.
Also they used to put the 90k figure on their careers page but they have changed it now.
I see no starting salaries for new grads in the link you provided, where are they?
You should always take salary estimates from Glassdoor.com with a grain of salt.Those salaries estimates were calculated from salaries that website users entered on the site, they have not been authenticated by anyone!, even YOU can go to Glassdoor and register as a professional in any profession working at any company, and you can then proceed to enter any salary you want.
The other thing that makes Glassdoor particularly unreliable is the fact that they only give full membership to people who have entered salaries, so a student like me has to enter a fake salary in order to obtain unliminted access to the salary information on their site.
Original post by History98
I see no starting salaries for new grads in the link you provided, where are they?
You should always take salary estimates from Glassdoor.com with a grain of salt.Those salaries estimates were calculated from salaries that website users entered on the site, they have not been authenticated by anyone!, even YOU can go to Glassdoor and register as a professional in any profession working at any company, and you can then proceed to enter any salary you want.
The other thing that makes Glassdoor particularly unreliable is the fact that they only give full membership to people who have entered salaries, so a student like me has to enter a fake salary in order to obtain unliminted access to the salary information on their site.
You should always take salary estimates from Glassdoor.com with a grain of salt.Those salaries estimates were calculated from salaries that website users entered on the site, they have not been authenticated by anyone!, even YOU can go to Glassdoor and register as a professional in any profession working at any company, and you can then proceed to enter any salary you want.
The other thing that makes Glassdoor particularly unreliable is the fact that they only give full membership to people who have entered salaries, so a student like me has to enter a fake salary in order to obtain unliminted access to the salary information on their site.
It is likely to be fairly legitmate but cant help you with starting salaries.
All I know is that fb did advertise software engineers for $90k/per annum. Sorry cant help you from there.
Original post by ch0llima
Well, where do I start?
Honestly, it's only the conceited City employers that really care about these things - they'd hire a trained monkey if it studied at Oxford and had a rich daddy. Even multi-national FTSE 100 juggernauts will hire someone from an ex-poly if they impress at interview and are right for the role.
Honestly, it's only the conceited City employers that really care about these things - they'd hire a trained monkey if it studied at Oxford and had a rich daddy. Even multi-national FTSE 100 juggernauts will hire someone from an ex-poly if they impress at interview and are right for the role.
They want us because we have the mathematical abilities and also programming skills to solve difficult problems. It is the combination of the two that makes us so valued. Much harder to find similar levels of mathematical ability on non-oxbridge/ imperial courses.
OK 5 negs so I decided to make an edit.
DO you know what, to all you people negging me. **** you. OXford you sit the mat to get a place, the same test maths students sit. The cambridge course is very mathematical and a similar emphasis is placed on rigour. Imperial computing graduates were the second best paid of all uni grads in 2008, just after Cambridge economists, and are highly sought after in finance. I am not talking ****, having just obtained an internship doing financial computing.
If you don't like the truth tough, negging me won't change the way the system works. I did not say exclusively that only OXbridge students could get well-paid jobs. There will be many highly numerate people outside of oxbridge too, but in smaller concentrations at their respective unis.
(edited 11 years ago)
Original post by ch0llima
Honestly, he's too arrogant to step aside and let a proper businessman take the helm. Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped aside and brought in the non-technical outsider Eric Schmidt as CEO, somehow I don't think Google would be this successful without some kind of pragmatic and experienced leadership.
I agree with you totally.
Original post by Blutooth
They want us because we have the mathematical abilities and also programming skills to solve difficult problems. It is the combination of the two that makes us so valued. Much harder to find similar levels of mathematical ability on non-oxbridge/ imperial courses.
That is fantastically conceited. 11/10.
Original post by benbread
Kadux hits the nail on the head here really - A degree alone will not in any way guarantee a good job. I know plenty of CS grads who have graduates with 1sts but are utterly inept at any kind of real-world (i.e. the stuff that people will actually pay you for) stuff, they simply memorised the curriculum and passed the exams.
In order to be a high-paying developer/architect/etc you must be able to solve problems, come up with new solutions, learn new technologies and apply stuff you already know to problems you don't know the answer to. You have to be analytical but most importantly you have to be borderline obsessive about finding out how things work, how they fit together and how they can be improved.
What I'm trying to say is anyone can write simple programs with little training, but to be able to use new technologies, to thing up solutions that have to scale effectively and perform well and to methodically break down problems into a solution takes a whole lot more than what a book can teach you. A degree in CS will take you a good way but there is so much more to it than learning the relative complexity of sorting algorithms or understanding how TCP works. If you're thinking of doing CS only because you want a high-paying job at the end, you'll sorely regret it.
In order to be a high-paying developer/architect/etc you must be able to solve problems, come up with new solutions, learn new technologies and apply stuff you already know to problems you don't know the answer to. You have to be analytical but most importantly you have to be borderline obsessive about finding out how things work, how they fit together and how they can be improved.
What I'm trying to say is anyone can write simple programs with little training, but to be able to use new technologies, to thing up solutions that have to scale effectively and perform well and to methodically break down problems into a solution takes a whole lot more than what a book can teach you. A degree in CS will take you a good way but there is so much more to it than learning the relative complexity of sorting algorithms or understanding how TCP works. If you're thinking of doing CS only because you want a high-paying job at the end, you'll sorely regret it.
This.
I have a mate with a CS degree (2.1 from Sheffield) who is 25 and earning close to 6 figures. That is mostly however due to the fact that he's been coding since he was 13, earning money from coding since he was 15, and is really good at what he does. He doesn't apply for jobs, he gets head-hunted.
I have another friend who is a networking programmer for Reuters, he doesn't have a CS degree at all, but learned most of his stuff the hard way.
The really good programming jobs seem to go to people that live and breath it, who learn a new language because it's fun, who may be working 8-6 but have their own projects on the side. It's not the type of thing you do a degree for and expect to earn big bucks unless you've got the experience to back it.
Original post by Blutooth
They want us because we have the mathematical abilities and also programming skills to solve difficult problems. It is the combination of the two that makes us so valued. Much harder to find similar levels of mathematical ability on non-oxbridge/ imperial courses.
Original post by Blutooth
They want us because we have the mathematical abilities and also programming skills to solve difficult problems. It is the combination of the two that makes us so valued. Much harder to find similar levels of mathematical ability on non-oxbridge/ imperial courses.
Just so we're clear, this is your opinion as...a soon-to-be fresher at Oxford who's just done a gap year?
Original post by Old Father Time
This field is a good one to get into in my opinion. I took it at A level, and it was difficult, however the skills you learn can be used all over the world. Programming is a universal language, and there are an abundance of jobs available at many major companies such as Twitter/Google ect as well as having the option of free lancing and creating software for companies/organizations. If you enjoy it, go for it.
It is not. They are many different programming languages and some do not even use English keywords.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programming_languages
Original post by Old Father Time
This field is a good one to get into in my opinion. I took it at A level, and it was difficult, however the skills you learn can be used all over the world. Programming is a universal language, and there are an abundance of jobs available at many major companies such as Twitter/Google ect as well as having the option of free lancing and creating software for companies/organizations. If you enjoy it, go for it.
There's also so much more to "computer science" jobs and the IT sector than programming and software development. Most graduates stumble into these jobs because CS degrees in general, IMO, focus too much on it and the graduates are conditioned into thinking it's the only way forward and it's all they're trained for.
Bugger that. I escaped and do something non-programming related, and if I had to go back to programming full time I'd give serious thought to quitting IT and retraining in another sector.
Original post by ch0llima
There's also so much more to "computer science" jobs and the IT sector than programming and software development. Most graduates stumble into these jobs because CS degrees in general, IMO, focus too much on it and the graduates are conditioned into thinking it's the only way forward and it's all they're trained for.
Bugger that. I escaped and do something non-programming related, and if I had to go back to programming full time I'd give serious thought to quitting IT and retraining in another sector.
Bugger that. I escaped and do something non-programming related, and if I had to go back to programming full time I'd give serious thought to quitting IT and retraining in another sector.
We all have to start somewhere and if one hasn't taken advantage of one's opportunities then maybe a reasonably well paid programming job is a reasonable base. I guess it depends on the situation.
At least, that's what I tell myself.
(edited 11 years ago)
Original post by ch0llima
There's also so much more to "computer science" jobs and the IT sector than programming and software development. Most graduates stumble into these jobs because CS degrees in general, IMO, focus too much on it and the graduates are conditioned into thinking it's the only way forward and it's all they're trained for.
Bugger that. I escaped and do something non-programming related, and if I had to go back to programming full time I'd give serious thought to quitting IT and retraining in another sector.
Bugger that. I escaped and do something non-programming related, and if I had to go back to programming full time I'd give serious thought to quitting IT and retraining in another sector.
Out of interest, what sort of work do you do?
(edited 11 years ago)
Original post by ch0llima
There's also so much more to "computer science" jobs and the IT sector than programming and software development. Most graduates stumble into these jobs because CS degrees in general, IMO, focus too much on it and the graduates are conditioned into thinking it's the only way forward and it's all they're trained for.
Bugger that. I escaped and do something non-programming related, and if I had to go back to programming full time I'd give serious thought to quitting IT and retraining in another sector.
Bugger that. I escaped and do something non-programming related, and if I had to go back to programming full time I'd give serious thought to quitting IT and retraining in another sector.
I was thinking of that too. CS contains computer architecture, information systems, web development, database, systems analysis etc. but most people focus on application development.
What about systems analyst instead of programmer?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgKiIAjtrR4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tChuHB4eHQM
(edited 11 years ago)
Original post by Chrosson
We all have to start somewhere and if one hasn't taken advantage of one's opportunities then maybe a reasonably well paid programming job is a reasonable base. I guess it depends on the situation.
At least, that's what I tell myself.
We all have to start somewhere and if one hasn't taken advantage of one's opportunities then maybe a reasonably well paid programming job is a reasonable base. I guess it depends on the situation.
At least, that's what I tell myself.
What opportunities? Do I detect some kind of regret and wishing things had turned out differently, here - want to take this to PM?
Original post by MarcD
Out of interest, what sort of work do you do?
Network and systems security.
Original post by 764dak
I was thinking of that too. CS contains computer architecture, information systems, web development, database, systems analysis etc. but most people focus on application development.
What about systems analyst instead of programmer?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgKiIAjtrR4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tChuHB4eHQM
What about systems analyst instead of programmer?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgKiIAjtrR4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tChuHB4eHQM
Systems analyst is another one of the generic "stumble into it" graduate jobs, because it doesn't require too much experience and is more business-oriented. I don't know too much about what it actually involves though
(edited 11 years ago)
Original post by Chrosson
Just so we're clear, this is your opinion as...a soon-to-be fresher at Oxford who's just done a gap year?
who, on his gap year, is also being paid as an intern in finance for mathematical/computing work.
Edit: Yeah, impressive, I know a whole 2 months of work experience
Work experience aside, I'm just saying how it is. Oxbridge/Imperial types are good at math. That should be valued by some employers.(edited 11 years ago)
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