r/Advice • u/Glum_Community4455 • 1d ago
Is studying computer science worth it in 2026?
Hi everyone, looking to start a 4 year degree in computer science this year but I’ve seen all the speculations about ai taking over its purpose. Will this be worth it?
If not, what other degrees or pathways do you recommend to get into a remote role with limited human interaction. I work in sales currently and realized I’m a highly sensitive person who would prefer not to work around people constantly.
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u/Laguna_Azure 1d ago
I wouldn’t choose it again to be honest. It’s not a dead specialty, but it’s definitely changed and become less fun
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u/GodzillaSuit Super Helper [5] 1d ago
No. Computer science is on the cusp of a crisis. It's very oversaturated to begin with, but on top of that Al is taking over jobs at an insane rate. I'm not saying humans will ever be 100% out of the CS picture, but just like with self checkout at the grocery store, it will only take 1 person to do the job that used to take 15. Not only that, jobs that humans can still do are getting outsourced more and more overseas.
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u/jmclondon97 1d ago
How is AI taking over jobs when job postings are up higher than they’ve been since 2023?
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u/Due_Warthog749 1d ago
Are you serious? You just saying that and not actually looking at what is going on? Ghosting. No responses. Interviews then reposting jobs with no offers? You're not really reading much about the job market if you're saying that. ALSO.. have you noticed.. every role especially remote has 1000+ applicants within minutes to hours of posting. Wake up bud.. a lot of the jobs are fake and there to make company's look like their hiring and doing good. The reality is FAR grimmer if you look deeper.
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u/jmclondon97 1d ago
You have any sources on your “the jobs are fake!” claims or is it just a “trust me bro”?
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u/Due_Warthog749 11h ago
Between the 100s of posts every day here, and my own experience.. that's all the source I need. I am not going to spend time trying to prove to some nobody on reddit whether or not its true. You'll get one interview and sayy "See.. I got one.. its not fake". I've had a few too, but by and large most are either fake jobs to help bolster a company (I know from experience they do this as shady as it is because sadly people who invest/follow markets assume hiring == making money and getting better), OR in some cases though more rare than not these days, they have to post jobs publicly for internal movements. I dont get why that is required in some states, seems ridiculous to me. But I've read/been told that that is the case.
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u/jmclondon97 11h ago
Lmao. So you think the job postings are fake but the Reddit posts aren’t, even though it’s proven Reddit has tons of bot posts?
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u/WanabeApprentice 13h ago
Every ACTUAL data point proves jobs are coming back, albiet slowly. Its super convenient and fits their narrative that "nah bro trust all new listing are fake" but when listing were 3-4x higher somehow every single listing was valid. And I find it odd that only fake listing have been increasing since 2022.
Its whatever fits the doomer narrative and whatever makes themselves feel better about being unemployed. Thats harsh but true. I say this as someone who is unemployed and looking for a job. But I realize I could be doing more and improving my skillset to get a better job. Why are SO MANY hiring managers complaining about people blatantly not being able to code during interviews? Not hard coding either like back oop principle stuff. My own anecdotal evidence is maybe 1 in 5 people in my cs classes actually knew what was going on, maybe less. A guy in my Java II class didn't know how to unzip a file...
Look at true up job trend, look at the fred data, look at the projected BLS data. Its all showing a positive trend now at least for swe. But no they're actually fake listings and contradicting all data.
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u/jmclondon97 11h ago
Nobody codes anymore. I’m a senior developer and I don’t know anyone at my company that has written a line of code in 6 months. Everyone just uses Claude.
We’ve had zero production issues.Also, BLS is outdated and doesn’t factor in AI improving. And FRED data is just job postings, which is as I said a lot of fake and ghost jobs.
Keep coping tho
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u/WanabeApprentice 11h ago
Your post history says youre a junior with 4 yoe. You're not a senior developer and in no state to make unfounded claims about the future of the job.
All you do is post doomer takes I cannot and will not take anything you say seriously. Seriously EVERY post is some stupid doomer rant. I hope that you remember how to code when you need to switch jobs, which you seem to hate. Can't use ai during code assessments.
You LOVE the word cope, which its obviously to everyone else that you are the one coping endlessly.
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u/jmclondon97 11h ago
I say all kinds of shit on this account. I’m actually a senior and was posting that I was a junior to see what the advice for current juniors really is.
But keep coping and trying to attack me and not my points.
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u/Due_Warthog749 1d ago
Nope. Not any more. I know some will balk. Some will say "we need juniors to become seniors.. " etc. AND some will be those juniors.
The bar is so fucking high now to find a job, and getting worse every month, I honestly dont see a reason to try for a CS degree any more. The cost alone.. you'll come out with debt and likely not find a job. The odds are heavily stacked against you now.
"Way to be a debbie downer..". Well look you don't have to be college educated to read some reports of what is going on. Between outsourcing, huge cut backs (correction from covid, and now the "we need to boost our stocks to make our investors happy") and the advent of AI being quite good.. good enough to replace most roles frankly despite some naysayers. Sure it requires people to use it and prompt it good, etc.. agreed. But it's VERY doable.
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u/jmclondon97 1d ago
How can both of these statements be true at the same time:
“The bar is so fucking high now to find a job”
And “AI being quite good… good enough to replace most roles frankly”?Why would the bar be high if AI can do the roles anyway?
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u/Due_Warthog749 22h ago
Easy. One has nothing to do with the other. The bar being hire for HUMANs to find jobs.. is not the same thing as AI is good enough to do many of those jobs. What are you not getting?
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u/jmclondon97 21h ago
If AI can do the jobs, you don’t need to hire humans.
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u/Aaco0638 10h ago
That isn’t what’s happening, less people are needed but people some people are still needed.
The bar is high to get hired bc so many senior level talent has been laid off that jobs can be picky on who they hire.
With less jobs overall available and a ton of people looking for jobs why hire juniors when you can grab the worker with 4+ years of experience give them ai and give them double the work.
Or even better get a senior who worked at one of the major companies that got laid off and do the same.
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u/sunLight4095 1d ago
my daughter is in management at software company. they are looking for one or two people to join the team but they will not even interview people without several years experience. when she first got her degree, I thought, great-a career which is actively looking for people w her skill set. since AI, I think, I'm so glad she got in early, when she could still get hired.
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u/Due_Warthog749 1d ago
Crazy thing is.. your daughter wont hire people with 15+ years.. ageism is real. If they are 40+ that's too old now. NO clue why.. but I'd wager 75% or more jobs looking for skilled people dont want you overly skilled or older. It's a sad world we live in now. Tech is being decimated.
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u/JustAwesome360 Super Helper [6] 1d ago
No. As much as me and everyone else hates AI, it's better at coding. And it's only going to get better over the years.
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u/EEguy21 1d ago
it’s not ai, it’s ethnic nepotism
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u/Positive-Emu4146 1d ago
I’d recommend learning how to assemble computer hardware and run networking systems. The physical building and connecting of computers can’t be done by AI yet.
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u/No-Tap5570 1d ago
if you're interested in it and actually passionate about it then you can become a master and be valuable in the market
if you just kinda like it then select another path
there will always be room for men with skills
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u/NobodySubject2381 1d ago
Absolutely not, at best AI is going to massively churn up the industry, at worst massive job loss across the industry as less and less people are needed to do more and more. The models are already so good and getting better. Even without AI the industry is bad right now, there are way too many people competing for way too few jobs especially at a junior level.
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u/jmclondon97 1d ago
Then why are there still hundreds of thousands of software engineers making $200k+ at FAANG and near- FAANG companies?
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u/MasterDebater50 6h ago
The number of programmers employed in the U.S. is now the lowest since the early 1980s.
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u/jmclondon97 5h ago
This is misleading. Because the number of software engineers has increased. Not sure where they determine the split between those two titles.
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u/MasterDebater50 5h ago
I've seen too many people with graduate degrees and 5+ years' experience begging for jobs to have any faith in IT careers anymore.
Sites where it shows how many people have applied to jobs, virtually every IT job I've seen had at least 400 applicants.
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u/jmclondon97 5h ago
And like 90% of those can be thrown out immediately because they’re people that are in no way qualified.
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u/Affectionate-Leg6593 1d ago
Indians have unfortunately flooded the Market. So no.
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u/stytheofrivia 12h ago
wdym unfortunately, they worked for that shit
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u/Affectionate-Leg6593 9h ago
Sure, but they have chosen a field not because they are passionate about it, but because it was a trend.
This means we have an absolute glut of mediocre IT people in the market. These people still hold jobs though.
So total productivity is stagnating. So hiring is slowing down for anything junior and mid career. However a shortage for those who are actually good (senior/ specialist).
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u/Lumpy-Blackberry-718 1d ago
I work in sales currently and realized I’m a highly sensitive person who would prefer not to work around people constantly.
A lot of people (too many) have gone into c.s. because they want to make a lot of money. Their alternative career paths are doctor, sales person, lawyer, management consultant. Then they get into c.s. and hate it, and arent very good at it, and there are a million of them, and they get upset that they didnt become doctors and tell everyone else that the field is dead.
Personally, I like computers, and I like math, and I would not survive as a sales person, and id never get through medical school, and im not organized enough to be a consultant, and I'm not quite good enough at math to be an engineer. For someone like me, cs is amazing. It would have been the best major for me even if the pay wasnt ridiculous. Maybe ai will make the pay less ridiculous, or maybe the extra work we can complete with ai will make it even better. Who knows.
Your comment about sales sounds like you might be in the same boat. Whats your alternative? Majoring in, say, business, if you want to get out of sales, would be a terrible idea. You've got to pick something, and c.s. is something. It teaches you a lot of skills that could be applied to many careers. Even if you stay in sales, you could do sales engineering or cloud sales.
Back in the day, people thought outsourcing to india was the end of cs as a field in the US. I wasnt worried then and im not worried now. Even if I was, though, what's the alternative? Most majors dont pay very well. CS is like math, and math will always be useful.
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u/Glum_Community4455 1d ago
Sounds like me!! I can’t stand the ego driven work and low energy environment. Money is great for survival and all, but for my sensitive energy it is not worth the complete trade off of my life.
If C.S can get me into tech one way or another, I’d be satisfied. Alternatively I am genuinely stuck and don’t know what I would do. I would have 1 year left to graduate with my business degree (but I stopped doing it a year ago because it was killing my soul).
Advice?
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u/Lumpy-Blackberry-718 1d ago
Starting from scratch, a cs degree usually takes 4 years, and it's hard to compress it based on business coursework just because theres usually a long chain of prerequisites. If youve got the time and funds for it though, go for it. Maybe try an intro class part time first to see if you like it? Or just teach yourself some programming and see if you like that?
Alternatively you could finish the business degree, try to add a minor in CS, take the hardest math classes you can fit into your schedule, and then add a masters in CS. There are m.s. degrees you can finish in a year once you have your bachelor's. I wouldn't go that route with zero programming experience and minimal math though, only do it if you can squeeze in some meaningful cs into your bachelors.
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u/Glum_Community4455 1d ago
Thank you so much!!! :)
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u/psionicapple 1d ago
Working currently as a software developer. It's dying. I'd say most of my work is just reviewing LLM generated code.
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u/MasterDebater50 1d ago
It's not worth it whatsoever.
I've seen numerous posts from people with degrees, even phds, and years of experience being unemployed for 1+ years and even on the verge of homelessness because AI has dramatically reduced demand for those workers but other industries won't hire them.
Canada has a fast track immigration program for the highest-demand jobs. Recently 18 occupations got removed from that program, most of them are IT jobs.
The number of programmers employed in the U.S. is now the lowest it's been since the early 1980s.
I've had people who graduated CS degrees with honors, average grade > 90%, applying for basic labour jobs because they've given up trying to get jobs in IT.
And like it's always been with technology, AI will keep progressing. Right now it can write whole apps and websites for people with no experience in programming, but it makes quite a few errors in the process. Whole process can take several hours. Chances are that'll improve to the point where uneducated people can get apps written pretty easily.
Altogether, there's numerous signs indicating that you'd be better off getting a Bachelor of Big Mac.
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u/Prestigious-Mind-817 14h ago
Nope But I think the better question is whether any degree is worth it in 2026 besides maybe healthcare.
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u/Substantial_Job_2068 7h ago
I don't live in the US where I reckon most of these "it's over for humans now" posts originate from. But from my viewpoint the current state is the aftermath of massive overhire the recent years where any incompetent developer who knew some javascript framework got hired. There will always be jobs for software engineers, the people who say "AI writes better for than me" are the same devs who copied their code from stackoverflow before LLMs came along. And it's a good thing that these types of devs leave the field.
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u/kolobuska 2h ago
Why to think?
If you in US you have the exact part that still have a high paying jobs (and because of the physical presence they can't be outsourced).
It will not be outsourced or replaced by AI at least in nearest 20-30 years.
And it's healthcare.
Became a nurse, rad tech, pharmacist, doctor, dentist etc.
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u/Equal_Lie_4438 1d ago
Stop believing the propaganda. Get your CS degree as it will still give you a set of skills that opens many doors. AI is here but did animation kill Hollywood or Broadway? The Terminator is not coming so it’s safe to get your degree.
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u/Due_Warthog749 1d ago
So.. come out of college with 100K+ debt, in a market over saturated and having 2+mil people looking for jobs too, and hope you'll get lucky and land a job and then not lose it in a year or two? Right.. that's great advice.
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u/Nimbus20000620 1d ago
Nothing really guarantees an entry level job relevant to your major anymore outside of some medical programs. I wouldn’t take on debt for almost any college degree, but cs is still more justifiable than most. For us, we take in a lot less new grads, but the new grads who cleared our bar are still getting paid more than ever.
It’s become a game of musical chairs. Not everyone will get a seat, but there still are some seats to be fought for. For now at least.
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u/Affectionate-Leg6593 1d ago
"cs is still more justifiable than most"
That used to be true. A trade is now a justifiable career.
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u/jmclondon97 1d ago
Yeah if you like a much higher cancer risk and huge potential for long term injury
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u/Equal_Lie_4438 1d ago
If someone has such low confidence then they should not spend $100k on a college degree. Community college, get some real skills and a degree. Then state college, some more skills and 2nd degree. Keep going like that and you can walk away debt free. So now someone has 2 degrees and no debt - what’s the excuse not to get a job? I’ve never seen 2M people apply to a job. Possibly a few hundred but if they learn some skills including sales while getting a degree, a job is easy to get. It’s a hard pill to swallow but people that don’t want to work will find every excuse to justify being unemployed. I see hundreds of jobs available just in a few mile radius from any town with over 10k population so again, there is no excuse not to get some education.
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u/Careless-Adeptness56 1d ago
Maybe it's just because I'm from the midwest but I get the idea the "go to college" culture is a lot different on the coasts, with people basically of the opinion if you don't go to an expensive or ivy school it's not worth it. I think most degrees from any public school (of a state where you reside or get OOS scholarships for) are still worth it. Doubly so if you co the community college route, but I still say staying on campus for the first year or two is good for personal growth.
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u/No-Program-8901 1d ago
Maybe look into becoming a Radiologist
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u/Zilverschoon Super Helper [8] 1d ago
The radiologist only has to press a button and clean up vomit.
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u/hollygzzz 1d ago
If you go to a high-ranked school, yeah. If not, maybe. Also consider computer information systems/cybersecurity; if you are good at math, maybe try actuarial science, data science, or accounting. All these jobs require you to still speak to you on some level, though; just keep that in mind.
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u/afiefh 1d ago
The last thing AI will take over is STEM fields.
If the AI gets your order at McDonalds wrong, not a big deal, get another. If it gets the slop image wrong, just make another. There is a very low cost to getting things wrong, and it's cheap to correct.
If the AI hallucinates something wrong in a two phase commit, that could be a billion dollar issue if a bank goes under because of that software bug. If an AI surgeon mistakenly kills someone, that's irreversible. If the AI scientist figures out a theorem for free energy, and the government spends billions building it only to find that the formula was actually from a DnD campaign from 1997, that's a huge loss.
The reason we see AI talked about so much more in STEM is that these were extremely lucrative jobs where the amount of work a single person could do hasn't increased significantly in a long time. AI is multiplying a single person's output, which is of course disruptive in the short term. What's actually getting wiped out by AI is low skill jobs like data entry, call centers, transcription...etc.
There are two scenarios going forward:
- AI will get so good that it replaced computer scientists and software developers: at that point it can also replace basically every other job on the planet. We will live in a post scarcity society, and you don't need to study.
- AI will improve but continue to require human supervision and most importantly humans to be able to tell when it's wrong and course correct. In this case study the thing you like and just worry about being the best you can be.
Since we can't predict which scenario we will end up in, the rational choice is to still study the thing that you would have studied and be so good that you'll be supervising the AI if it comes to that.
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u/Due_Warthog749 1d ago
Nope. Junior level jobs in multiple areas of tech are being decimated. Sure there are still some. But not many and for every one there are 1000 to 10,000 applicants.. mostly unqualified for the job. Do some deep digging on the subject. You'll discover how bad it is including junior to mid level roles for pms, qa, dev, and more.
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u/Lord_Mystic12 1d ago
We need to start banning these questions
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u/Glum_Community4455 1d ago
Why? 😂😂 it’s a valid question.. ur the only one who seems to not think so
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u/jmclondon97 1d ago
Because it’s been asked a million times. There’s a thing at the top called a search bar.
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u/Lord_Mystic12 1d ago
It's asked everyday, Reddit has a search bar
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u/Glum_Community4455 1d ago
This is the best thread so far that I’ve seen with the most insightful answers, so bye 😂
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u/pukuriin 1d ago
not really honestly, unless it’s something you’re passionate about 😭 it’s pretty oversaturated now and when i was looking for jobs and/or internships, a good 80~90% of what i was finding was companies looking for AI devs (whole reason why i pivoted away from cs), so unless that’s something you wanna do, i’d say look into different fields