sugar_in_your_tea , 4 hours ago

I had a chat w/ my sibling about the future of various careers, and my argument was basically that I wouldn’t recommend CS to new students. There was a huge need for SW engineers a few years ago, so everyone and their dog seems to be jumping on the bandwagon, and the quality of the applicants I’ve had has been absolutely terrible. It used to be that you could land a decent SW job without having much skill (basically a pulse and a basic understanding of scripting), but I think that time has passed.

I absolutely think SW engineering is going to be a great career long-term, I just can’t encourage everyone to do it because the expectations for ability are going to go up as AI gets better. If you’re passionate about it, you’re going to ignore whatever I say anyway, and you’ll succeed. But if my recommendation changes your mind, then you probably aren’t passionate enough about it to succeed in a world where AI can write somewhat passable code and will keep getting (slowly) better.

I’m not worried at all about my job or anyone on my team, I’m worried for the next batch of CS grads who chatGPT’d their way through their degree. “Cs get degrees” isn’t going to land you a job anymore, passion about the subject matter will.