I’m a senior in high school right now and definitely need to consider what I’m going to do in college and for work.
For a very long time I’ve been into computers, and am a developer with a few big projects under my belt (this is a burner account for privacy). So, my logical choice for a while was to become a software developer professionally.
Nowadays that plan doesn’t look too promising. AI has basically replaced junior developers (with dubious results) and the competition has gotten much fiercer. I’m not even in college yet so I have a good amount of time to potentially pivot to something else before choosing a major.
I’ve got quite a bit of experience with Linux and I manage a home server, but that probably doesn’t differentiate me much. I’m honestly interested in most things computer related, but don’t know of any specific fields to seek out. If it’s so hard for fresh CS graduates to get jobs, why would any other option be different?
This is my main apprehension when it comes to pursuing a CS career. I already have an undergrad CS degree. I got it right before LLMs were even a thing. I know I’m rusty, but I have pretty strong fundamentals. I was already working in IT as a student so I stuck with that and all the jobs I’ve had since college have been fixing broken shit for someone else. Part of me would like to make software engineer money, but I hear employed programmers talk about the soul-crushing monotony of staring down a bottomless ticket queue and burning up their passion for creativity on fixing annoying issues with software that someone else wants them to build and I unfortunately already know EXACTLY what they’re talking about. I’m so fucking sick of ticket queues. I understand the utility. I get why they exist, but goddamn it’s such a sisyphian way to organize a workflow. It never feels like I’m actually making progress.
I’ve been unemployed for the past few months and I’ve just started getting back into coding for fun and for the first time in forever I can feel what drew me to programming to begin with. Every time I had the “what’s your major?” discussion with a fellow student, I’d explain that the reason I was pursuing programming is because I like making stuff, and programming seemed like an obvious way to seriously level-up the kinds of stuff I can make. I usually got weird looks for this answer because I suppose I was expected to just say “money.”
Using the skills I’ve developed for something I’m passionate about and applying them to a goal that I’m either completely indifferent to or actually opposed to does not sound like a fulfilling career to me. If I spent all day on an annoying software bug, I’m not going to want to keep doing software after I get home. I already know this because I didn’t want to do troubleshooting when I got home after spending my whole day doing that. I had all-but completely stopped making things for fun because the hurdles I’d run into in my hobby felt too much like work. I’m only just getting back into it now because I haven’t been working for a while.
Part of me feels like I should at least try programming as a career, but I have a terrible feeling that I already know what it will do to my mental health.