Curious: Would you ADVISE incoming college students to take COMSCI?
This perspective from an early career professional has been living rent-free in my mind:
"...tech has just become a landscape of SaaS companies exchanging API keys and acting as if billions of dollars of efficiency and value are being created."
We've heard similar advice before: parents and mentors encouraging middle schoolers and early career professionals to venture into TECH as a pathway to earn more than their counterparts.
Their envisioned future:
- Be a coder at a foreign company for the higher pay
- Working from a beach in the Philippines
- ???
- Profit
BAD NEWS: Learning to code alone will no longer set you apart.
1/ The recent layoffs in tech abroad have targeted those who are either too expensive, underperforming, lacking leadership skills, or missing domain expertise.
2/ Foreign companies are looking to the Philippines and other countries for CHEAP talent. They are looking for people who can spend time googling, chasing bugs, and hacking away at their laptops...
3/ For the PH, this results in local investments going towards devshops with access to thousands of developers, coders, frontend experts who CAN code but lack real-world expertise beyond Zoom calls and Slack.
4/ Stanford currently has 865 undergrads majoring in COMSCI and only 16 in Civil Engineering.
But the world is changing. Skills that can be automated or augmented with AI are now at risk.
With AI, anyone with a laptop can now become a coder.
My suggestion to our dear #GenZs and early career professionals: Major in a specific industry and minor in Computer Science.
Learn how to survey land. Learn how to build a farm. Learn how to build infrastructures. Learn how to sell. Learn how to create stories. Learn how to cook. Learn how to really teach people. Learn how make art. Learn to tailor. Learn how to heal people. Learn how to deal with people.
And then add TECH to augment and supercharge a career.
That's the way to truly add value with tech.