My true CS story and a word of caution to those pursuing it /u/Zealousideal-Mix-567 CSCQ protests reddit

I have a degree in computer engineering from a T25 with 2 internships. My career progression has gone unpaid, 13/hr no benefits, 26/hr, 20/hr no benefits, 34/hr but now on track for layoff. I’m 33 and only have 5 years of real work exp. I have lived at home and lived cheap the entire time but yet haven’t saved as much as my parents have spent supporting me to get here. I’ve only just now cracked the 200K barrier but they have prob spent more like 300K to get me here. I have never been on a vacation or traveled, I get 6 days off per year, and my idea of eating out is a McDonalds McChicken with a free large fry loss leader coupon. And again, I work from 9AM to 3AM multiple times a month.

I am almost fully sedentary and asocial, and have developed late onset autism and schizophrenia due to the high cognitive load and stress of pursuing this career path. At age 33, I’m setting aside the idea of ever starting a family or likely ever having real estate.

After this layoff, due to a severe lack of jobs in my field for the foreseeable future, I will likely be looking at pivoting back to the same basic labor I could have done straight out of high school anyway and skipped all the costs and time waste of higher Ed. It will likely pay somewhere in the $16-20/hr range for backbreaking work that I would have preferred to get out of the way when younger, and I will be shackled to living with family for the rest of my life.

Due to the lowering of my testosterone and vocal ability (nothing to talk about combined with weakened vocal cords, since I’m at a computer mostly silent all day every day) due to having a sedentary computer job, most people find me socially repulsive and strongly dislike me within a few seconds of interaction. I am frequently bullied even as an adult, and have even received physical threats verbally as well as direct threatening physical contact from coworkers. This happens both in the workplace and when attempting to socialize. I am friendly to everyone I come into contact with, but this is usually met with aggression.

This is what STEM higher Ed study path sowed me.

I believe this is a realistic and common outcome of pursuing STEM as a career path. Out of the dozen people I can think of that I’ve kept up with after schooling, only one other person has found a job paying above the 60K range. Many of them never found anything and had to work 60-70 hours at a service level job or basic labor job to pay back their student loans, often while still living at home or with many roommates. Only one of them has been able to start a family. I’m actually a success story compared to most of my peers because I didn’t have the student loan debt.

When doing simple searches for various STEM job postings on Indeed or LinkedIn etc in my geographic area, over time I have noticed there are only a handful of applicable college-level jobs for STEM (or business, or humanities) grads every year, but there are known to be well more than 15,000 college graduates every year in the area. I would say the number is generously 2000 jobs for every 15,000 grads. This is a trend I have been noticing since honestly 2008, as I frequently scroll job boards in my spare time. The statistics that I have recorded for myself are wildly out of line with what is actually usually reported from the BLS and from higher Ed organizations.

I recommend to do real data taking over your geographic region and seeing for yourself what you really think. I think we are massively overvaluing the college degree currently and putting too much focus and time waste into it for our youth, leading to a detriment of their life outcome.

I have a degree in computer engineering from a T25 with 2 internships. My career progression has gone unpaid, 13/hr no benefits, 26/hr, 20/hr no benefits, 34/hr but now on track for layoff. I’m 33 and only have 5 years of real work exp. I have lived at home and lived cheap the entire time but yet haven’t saved as much as my parents have spent supporting me to get here. I’ve only just now cracked the 200K barrier but they have prob spent more like 300K to get me here. I have never been on a vacation or traveled, I get 6 days off per year, and my idea of eating out is a McDonalds McChicken with a free large fry loss leader coupon. And again, I work from 9AM to 3AM multiple times a month.

I am almost fully sedentary and asocial, and have developed late onset autism and schizophrenia due to the high cognitive load and stress of pursuing this career path. At age 33, I’m setting aside the idea of ever starting a family or likely ever having real estate.

After this layoff, due to a severe lack of jobs in my field for the foreseeable future, I will likely be looking at pivoting back to the same basic labor I could have done straight out of high school anyway and skipped all the costs and time waste of higher Ed. It will likely pay somewhere in the $16-20/hr range for backbreaking work that I would have preferred to get out of the way when younger, and I will be shackled to living with family for the rest of my life.

Due to the lowering of my testosterone and vocal ability (nothing to talk about combined with weakened vocal cords, since I’m at a computer mostly silent all day every day) due to having a sedentary computer job, most people find me socially repulsive and strongly dislike me within a few seconds of interaction. I am frequently bullied even as an adult, and have even received physical threats verbally as well as direct threatening physical contact from coworkers. This happens both in the workplace and when attempting to socialize. I am friendly to everyone I come into contact with, but this is usually met with aggression.

This is what STEM higher Ed study path sowed me.

I believe this is a realistic and common outcome of pursuing STEM as a career path. Out of the dozen people I can think of that I’ve kept up with after schooling, only one other person has found a job paying above the 60K range. Many of them never found anything and had to work 60-70 hours at a service level job or basic labor job to pay back their student loans, often while still living at home or with many roommates. Only one of them has been able to start a family. I’m actually a success story compared to most of my peers because I didn’t have the student loan debt.

When doing simple searches for various STEM job postings on Indeed or LinkedIn etc in my geographic area, over time I have noticed there are only a handful of applicable college-level jobs for STEM (or business, or humanities) grads every year, but there are known to be well more than 15,000 college graduates every year in the area. I would say the number is generously 2000 jobs for every 15,000 grads. This is a trend I have been noticing since honestly 2008, as I frequently scroll job boards in my spare time. The statistics that I have recorded for myself are wildly out of line with what is actually usually reported from the BLS and from higher Ed organizations.

I recommend to do real data taking over your geographic region and seeing for yourself what you really think. I think we are massively overvaluing the college degree currently and putting too much focus and time waste into it for our youth, leading to a detriment of their life outcome.