I would recommend you look into a computer science, software engineering, computer engineering or MIS degree. A degree shows that you can problem solve and teaches you how to solve problems which is very valuable. Just internships around where I live which is the middle of Iowa are around $20/hr 40 hours a week and thats just an internship. You must also pursue stuff on your own, you cant just rely on the academics, they teach you the core principles but to learn specific stuff you learn at on your own as side projects or like on Github. If you want to get started in the industry start emailing and even cold calling different companies and ask what they are looking for in like an intern and you can use that to get a full time position down the road.
No if you just want money go into petroleum engineering.
medium salary is around 130k.
Well of course
If I could download Wendells technical knowledge that'd be great
Yeah I'm saying focus more on the certs until college is better/easier to do. I just had a bad experience doing compsci at my college (mostly because its a liberal arts school so they half ass everything) and getting around that was a pain in the ass. And with the internship, I said I would be able to be paid in hardware if the company was going to be a shit head and the guy I would be working for said he would allow that but honestly the only machine in there that I want is an amiga A500. Theres a quadcpu server as well but I would just sell that. I got another radio station interested and they wanted me to work for free out by the capital of the state. Fuck that thats 2 hours drive for working for free.
Thats tough to hear I am going to a very engineering influenced college even computer science people have to take classes like digital design. I disagree with certs though as a thing before college. I think if you dont want to go to college right away it wouldnt hurt to start learning some in demand skills like web development. Essentially they would have to learn backend stuff, take your pick , Node.js, Java, ASP.NET, PHP, ect. Then there is design stuff up front design stuff.
Yeah net code is a good thing to bounce on as every 13 year old who gets a raspi thinks he can start a company. I just think having more in line with the X+ certs would help get a basis and it would help get jobs easier. I know that if I had an A+ cert it would make it easier to work at a few places I scrap from. I was offered a job once at a place because their server went down while I was there picking up scrap, I walked up while the tech was in the bathroom, did 2 things because it was just GRUB2 not loading (easiest fix), the guy comes running like wtf are you doing, server reboots, it works. I knew what was wrong with it. I was also like 14 or something? Obviously now I would ask to take a shot at it but the guy was floored (he was a windows tech, knew nothing on linux) and they wanted to offer me a job but couldn't, not because I was young, but because I didn't have an A+. I was turning 15 in a few days so it wouldn't have been a problem. I can prove what I am capable of in a test but if you don't have this little scrap of paper saying yes on it a lot then you can't work in the basement.
Stupid shit like that always gets in the way. Easier to get a whatever job that you can blank out at and listen to a podcast or read notecards with cert test questions that you scramble and have in your pocket. Then go home, work on cert stuff a bit, go to sleep, repeat. When you have the cert move up.
Thing is, comp sci degrees are so generalized it doesn't really equal out to what you need it to till the end of it- when you pick a facet to specialize in. A lot of schools just have you take like 10 intro classes for things like Java, C++, etc. But you will need more than the intro to do reasonable work in the future. Not saying the degree can't/won't get you a job, but you want something you can excel and move up with.
Yes, it is. I really don't think you can do programming at entry level forever with the rate things like compilers are coming up. You might find a job, but once the project gets built, they might not need you anymore. I've heard of this happening locally so I don't think its an outlandish thought.
Dude, most of us in are mid-twenties are barely making it, I don't think its very uncommon. Even if you have a decent job it really only makes you in the 'surviving' middle class. I wouldn't focus on things like starting a family until you are well established. I have seen plenty of people I graduated with who have already got married/had kids (I'm 25) and are barely making it. You want to be in a place where you can do well for yourself and your kids. So, you can have the family dream but make sure its reasonable. So many people rush into these things because they think that is what will make them happy in life, because its what everyone is doing. I don't think I want kids, but I know if I did, I would want to be set up.
Trades and certs can do a lot for you.
In my case, I have neither- just the experience listed on my resume. Do your time at the entry level shits for things like a HelpDesk and move on (that is what I did at my uni), the listing on your resume will do a lot for the 'experience,' even if it might not necessarily be relevant.
Yeh or like one of my friends that is realy good with Node.js and just got an offer with Microsoft for an internship thay pays around $45/hr.
I also have another friend in college doing computer science that gets calls everyday localy and pretty close to getting an offer from Lockheed Martin as a software engineer. He only has one internship under his belt and close to a sub 3.0 gpa.
if you want big money:
- law
- engineering
- medical
If you want more attainable comfortable living:
- skilled labor / trade
- education
If you are a masochist:
- photography
- landscaping (only works in rich neighborhoods)
- amateur web coding / freelance programmer
- trucker
Brokering skilled labor of any kind. Skimming off the top. Everyone hates you for it but you make an assload without doing much except being on the phone all the time.
Been a farmhand, a carpenter, an auto mechanic, a diesel mechanic and now I have an A+ certification and have been working up to more certs. Trades are wonderful for anyone who has a good work ethic.
As other people have said, Comp Sci on its own is pretty much useless. You need to have experience and context for the degree. It's like trying to build something with nothing but the glue that's supposed to hold the bits of frame that you don't have together. That's not to say that it's a bad degree to have - Wendell took Comp Sci as well, but he also backed it up with physics, certs, jobs and tinkering around with machines for basically his entire life to get the awe-inspiring level of experience he now has. Everyone starts from somewhere.
I think you've posted about this sort of thing before. My advice to you now is more or less the same that I gave last time - go out and network with people first. Whether that be a community group, club, neighbourhood society, church, what have you, you need to have contacts and people who know you fairly well. You may not be into that sort of thing, but trust me, you cannot get gainful, full-time employment by sitting in the corner of your bedroom and sending out applications and resumes via the internet. I have relatives who spent months freeloading at other relatives' houses doing just that, and it got them nowhere. Having an outlet for society and community like that is an absolute must.
I got my current (and first) full-time job from a guy at my church who needed help pulling grant applications together, I managed to turn out about a quarter million dollars worth of grants before the deadline came around and even got some experience doing computer maintenance and network upkeep. Since then I've become a more or less proper part of the firm. The office now works like greased lightning since I moved the computers to SSDs. I work full-time, with a monthly wage with which I could easily support myself if I had to. Now, granted, I'm not at the level that either of us might like to attain in the end, but those are the steps that I highly recommend that you at least try to emulate. Every job I have ever had, I attained because I knew someone who knew someone, and I only knew those people because they knew me from some sort of community group, in this case, church.
Don't set your sights so far away at the moment, it's too much, too fast at this point. Keep thinking about and studying up upon options that you may have for yourself in the future, and keep an open mind as to your options as they may change with time, but don't ever lose sight of what's important at the moment. Right now your task is (from my POV at least) to get gainful full-time employment that you can support just yourself with. How do you do that? Well, first you gotta find people who will employ you. How do you do that? well, you gotta find some platform on which to make yourself known to others and to put forth the example that you have
^Absolutely 100% this. If you don't have a good work ethic or you don't show to others that you have a good work ethic, you'll be flipping burgers at McDonalds for all eternity, if you're lucky.
The most important thing, though, is first of all to get your butt out of the door and start searching. I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm giving you a hard time, but sometimes from reading your posts I feel an urge to give you a swift kick to get you motivated. But it's okay, I know what being in your situation feels like. Just climbing this first rung out of unemployment limbo is gonna take time and effort as well as sackcloth-and-ashes levels of humility and respect. It's by far the hardest rung to climb. But once you have a platform with which to support yourself, moving forward from there is considerably less difficult in many ways. You'll be able to build a reputation and a resume, especially if you do other stuff on the side.
Have a look at everyone's advice, because going into trade is also an excellent option if you're enthusiastic and willing to get your hands dirty and work hard. Admittedly it is very long and vague, but at the end of the day my advice-rant here can be tl:dr'ed into a very simple list of tasks:
• Network with people in whatever ways you can figure out. DON'T BE SHY.
• Use the connections you make to try and land yourself employment that can support you. AGAIN, DON'T BE SHY. Lots of people are far more willing to help others than they're given credit for.
• Once there, live frugally as you can, save up for tertiary education and work on certs / experience on the side if you can.
Those are what I'd call your goals for the next few years imo, if I were your motivational coach or whatever.
And keep positive! Not every opportunity you find may work out, but that's okay! Don't worry if it takes time - that much is inevitable.
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I would say computer science gives you vertical knowledge but you must study stuff on your own time horizontally. An example is computer science will teach you how to make a binary search tree or a hashing algorithm. Then the software engineering part comes in where you wrap that in software and that is essentially all software. My classes that used Java in data structures and just pure Java helped me learn Android development because I learned allot of good practices from my classes.There are no specific courses though on Android. I think its the same with most majors that its not good enough to just stick to the program, companies like people that are willing to show their interest in the field. Sometimes companies will like you if you are trying to learn other stuff even if you dont have something successful. You should also try and make sure your Github is active to show you can code. The best way to get better at coding is to keep coding.
This is realy important, I got an offer to an internship I will probably do because I sent a Linkedin message to a guy that worked in this company. I met this guy because when I was taking intro to programming in a class I paid for in HS I had to drive to every week the company he worked for came and introduced themselves. That following summer before uni I took a java course over the summer and had a phone interview. I couldnt do the internship becasue I was going into college but it works out for this next summer.
The real funny story is why did I pay for a college class while I was in high school ? It involved losing a space station on Mine-Craft Voltz leading to me watching Wendell's office tour video that led to me talking to a girl that broke up the day I talked to her, things went bad real quick and for some reason after becoming depressed my brain snapped and I changed from a type B person to A and decided to take a years worth of college in a year of HS lol.
That's wrong. Big money is always in the banks. If you want lot of money in short time get your self a job at any large bank. It doesn't matter which sector you pick the banks will always pay more.
There was a guy from my Uni and the same class who got his first job at Barclays starting at £45 000/year + bonuses.
He was a programmer.
My mid twenties is when I decided to go to college. Got an IT degree and now doing way better than I was just a few years ago. Now 33 and making decent money. You'll always want more though.
It does take quite a bit of work though. Pretty much everyone wants certifications or experience. I've been lucky enough to find places that pay for those things. Take advantage of whatever resources you can.
Or...
you could pull a logan
lol, maybe if you're the CEO of that bank...
Banking and financial are terrible careers. Big firms work you to death (80hr 7-day weeks) for the first 5 years till you can become a manager and get to be the one doing it to the new wave of worker bees. My fiancee is a CPA and let me tell you... don't do that. It's not a good life. Many quit after 2 years and choose a new career because they simply can't survive sacrificing their life to their job.
Also, "minimum wage" for engineering jobs in my city are about $85-90k and $150-200 is attainable without having to be above "director" position.
The money is not in my wallet or bank account right now but if someone wants to give me a $5k loan at a very low interest rate it would be appreciated.