I am going back to school for computer science in the Spring...

I am going back to school for computer science in the Spring, and I was wondering if there was a real chance at having a decent life in that field? What is the saturation like? What about Indian/Chinese HB Visas? Is there a certain specailization I should go for?

Also can you go far with just an associates or is the bachelor's worth the extra 2 years of debt and lost 2 years of working?

Thinking about doing internships and portfolio in college, but I still don't know how to start. I really want to get into driving firmware for GPUs, but that's so specific I don't know if I have a shot at that. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

I'm age 25 right now btw.

Also I tried posting this thread on Cred Forums but it got insta deleted by a mod. I won't bother posting there again.

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bumping I guess

>Also can you go far with just an associates or is the bachelor's worth the extra 2 years of debt and lost 2 years of working?

Hard to say. It really depends on what kind of portfolio you can muster up within those 2 years. Generally it's worth it especially if you don't have experience.

Definitely can have a decent life. I'm 26 and make $64K/year. Not rich but I like my job and I'm definitely not poor.

Thanks for your advice.

By the time i get out of school I'll be 30 with no experience. Is that a good age to start? I'll obviously pursue internships in college as much as I can, but have no years of actual work experience under my belt.

I guess the extra 2 years is worth it then. I'll do my best to make a portfolio. I don't know how I'd get an internship writing driver firmware. Seems a bit obscure compared to web design and the like.

It's not too late. A guy at my company graduated at about that age.

That gives me some hope. Thanks man. I knew Cred Forums was better than Cred Forums. Cred Forums can suck an AIDS infected nigger dick.

>I am going back to school for computer science in the Spring, and I was wondering if there was a real chance at having a decent life in that field? What is the saturation like? What about Indian/Chinese HB Visas? Is there a certain specailization I should go for?

Shitty programmers and code monkeys will always exist. As long as you don't code like an indian, you don't need to worry about outsourcing. You get what you pay for. Most companies realize that by this point.

Focus on your portfolio like that other guy said. Make it look worth the money to hire you. Make it look like 10 indians did it or more. Treat it like a job. 8 hours a day 5 days a week while you're in college to get it where you need it to be. Intern and choose your company wisely. Tell the companies paying shit salaries to fuck off. Or dump them the soonest chance you get. Don't waste your life working for 30k a year programming. Think about moving to where the higher paying jobs are.

bumping

bump

Yeah, some companies offer shit salaries. One company's CEO gave a guest lecture and told us how he pays people over $100/hr. My friend applied. He got a job offer for $33K/year but was told that it was possible to get to 6 figures in 5 years. That CEO was just a liar. I knew a guy who worked for his company. He barely made anything then was let go after a few years. I started at over $26/hr straight out of school with no experience.

Yeah, that's happened to me quite a bit. You always get the talk about how you can make up to xxx,xxx per year, but then you realize you wasted more years of your life and either get fired or make a 1k bump.

Got any tips on how to get a job like that?

Yeah, I hate the Indian competition. Those cocksuckers just make life worse for everyone.

I'll definitely focus on my portfolio. Thanks for the advice.

OP here, I was also wondering if computer security is a good thing to specialize in. My two interests are security and firmware.

I am very good at some things. I'm not very technical, I have trouble installing software sometimes. But I'm very good at logic puzzles and stuff related to that. In one of my algorithms classes I answered a few questions. I remember one question really impressed the other students (multiple people commented on it). Anyway, after graduating I took a few months off to relax. When I applied the company asked people who went to school at the same time as me if they knew me. They had to look me up on facebook to match a face to the name, but they said that my answers in class impressed them. I think that is a large part of how I got the job. So if you're able to look intelligent and make contacts that helps.

Right now I'm working on a project with just me and a few dirt cheap India devs. About 6 months of work and we already have two buyers totalling over a million in sales. For years they've had me managing the guys in India. I sometimes tell people that I'm a software developer / babysitter. These guys can only do basic shit and sometimes spend hundreds of hours on something trivial.

>spend hundreds of hours on something trivial.

Something tells me it's because they're paid per hour. I don't think they're too motivated.

I'll definitely try to impress my professors. Do you recommend doing mostly online courses in community college and then sit-in classes after transferring? Or is that bad?

howd you have the money to take a few months off after school?

I am not sure. I would guess that those jobs are less common but higher paying if you can get them. At my company I was working on a product to replace an old product. One day someone asked about security. I said that I think it's secure. I then wondered whether the old product was secure. It wasn't. I "hacked" it in minutes. The company told me not to fix it (anout a day's work) because we'd be moving customers off it to the new product "soon". It was over a year before we moved the final customer over. We had around 90 customers.

I also found a security flaw in a product we sold thousands of (a piece of networking hardware). They were only concerned with whether the vulnerability was still present in the product being developed now (which was built on top of the old code). They have no interest in fixing the old units despite us having probably close to 10,000 in operation. So I'd say it's not uncommon for companies to not give a shit about security.

My parents are lawyers. They paid for my schooling. They rented out a townhouse for me and my siblings to use for university. My younger sister was still in school so they were paying rent there regardless, and 3 months of food etc isn't expensive.

They work the same hours every work day, they don't make any more money spending many hours on something, they just get less work done.

I like real classes in person, but I don't know if online is worse.

Not sure if this is a difference between universities internationally, but what constitutes a computer science degree and is that different from information tech?

Thing is I have to work full time going to school, so online classes make more sense in the short term but I'm worried about not being memorable to a professor or whatever. Is that as important in community college, or should I worry about that more when I transfer?

I don't know. But if you know your stuff you should be good upon graduating. The most important thing is what you learn.

Machine learning
get a Masters Degree eventually

"Education is the best provision for old age"