Ask HN: Where do you see the future of computer science jobs?
The classical Web is slowly dying. Lot's of people managed to transition into native App development for Android and iOS but how long will it last? Sure all the marketing people think that everyone and their dogs need an app to be trendy but do they really? Are people not sick of having to install another app? Isn't Facebook and Instagram all they care about?
AI is currently at the top of another hype cycle. It might have lasting staying power and real world applications this time. Heck it might even be able to avoid another AI winter but how will the churn of thousands of boot camp students chasing the next big thing effect the job market in the long term?
Personally I am really interested in Data Science so would be interesting to hear more about people working in this field. I heard it is a lot about cleaning up data which is something I actually like to do. Lot's of people are trying to get into the field though.
So what do you guys think? What are the best skills to learn to be ready for the future?
15 comments
[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 568 ms ] threadbut generally anything WebSomethingSomething is a good starting point!
AI as a term is heavily and inappropriately used, but there is no doubt this field is solid. it just happens that everyone try to leverage it as a buzzword.
anything scientific is pretty secure as well. data science, analyitics, statistics, etc. some remarkably interesting (most must be boring jobs imo although I like the field in general)
and of course there's automation - he who controls automation controls the world. or at least and usually highly capable to generate passive income.
then there are semi-cs jobs, the computer part without the science, such as art although many design, graphics, gaming, etc. roles are pretty technical. entertainment industry ain't going no where that's for sure.
Talking and explaining and solving business problems isn't going out of fashion.
The result of that systematic failure is an artificial perception of talent shortage. When people are unwilling to offer a solution developers instead turn to tools to fill that gap as though they can outsource experience and training for a product (typically free permissively licensed products).
Many software developers, as my experiences on HN suggest, are horrified to even address this problem and proposals are demonized. Every other industry has solved this problem. I suspect that if the industry is unwilling to address this matter it will take some catastrophic event and government will solve it for the industry.
The global SaaS market is growing at something like 10-20% year-on-year. Developer salaries have been rising steeply pretty much across the board. When the exponential growth ends, the steady state will likely be quite comfortable as well. You can pick whichever area you have an interest in and be safe for the foreseeable future.
BTW forget PHP systems, all the web and mobile apps built on top of 100s random NPM packages will require a tremendous manpower to deal with for decades.
Huh?
I've interviewed a couple times for Android dev jobs. The managers always ask if I've written native apps. I tell them I have written some apps in Java for Android, but haven't written any native apps. At this point they usually look confused or ask a for more details. Then I explain that actual native Android is C.
I get your point and I am sympathetic to it but most people would consider solutions in Java or Kotlin to be native. It is simply a different use of the word "native". Honestly these days even solutions like React Native(!) and Flutter are called native.
So I would say if a manager type is asking you and you are doing more than pure web stack PWAs it is fair game to call it native.
Data scientists are good at analysing the data. But they're not experts in encoding business logic in code.
Why do you think it's disappearing?