Comment by JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net on Is trying to get into computer science still worth it or has that ship sailed?

I was planning on going back to school to study data science, but everyone online is making it out like the tech field is dead and people are getting laid off and now you need eight year experience just to get an entry level gig. Worried I missed the boat on being able to get a good job in the field, should I just accept I’m stuck in retail?

Do you already have a computer background? I would just be wary of going back for an overpriced degree is all. Frankly, if you’re looking for useful skills I’d lean heavy towards AI and security. The combination of the two will be very useful in our cyberpunk dystopia.

I’m not tech illiterate but not super experienced either.

Thing is I kind of suck as self instruction, I thrive better in an environment where I got someone giving me projects and deadlines and direct feedback on my work. Hence why I haven’t had much luck trying to teach myself this stuff just by cruising GitHub.

I totally get that. As someone pointed out bootcamps would probably be good if you’ve got enough experience for them and you think you could operate under that format, but i would very much recommend avoiding getting yourself into a bunch of debt. But, all that being said, I’m completely out of touch with the corporate world nowadays and what they’re requiring as far as qualifications.

I took a Python boot camp actually and did well. Passed the PCEP cert with 85%. Thing is it seems most jobs want you to know way more than Python now and idk what to do next.

I’m not sure that’s true, consider “grinding leetcode” and applying to bigger tech companies that will have a standardized interview where they mostly just test leetcode questions

I’ll consider that

Find what interests you. Like if you can make it through a python boot camp you probably have enough literacy to do a bootcamp for what you want to be doing. If you wanna be a l33t hax0r for the revolution like I said, python is a great starting point as you can write exploits and work with most of the machine learning libraries out there.

If this is a path you might be interested in check out bug bounties and CTF sites. https://www.youtube.com/@NahamSec

I only know of a couple people I work with that have degrees

Get certs

It really depends on what you might do

Starting out at an msp, while it can suck, is a good way of exposing yourself to a lot of technologies quickly… I know where I’m at networking guys are in high demand

AI is really maths heavy, just so you’re aware. Using Tensorflow or Scikit learn is fine, but unless you understand the math you’ll be at a disadvantage.

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Is trying to get into computer science still worth it or has that ship sailed?

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