Ask HN: Should I study CS or Law?

Do Cs

Do CS. I also did the IB program, and now am studying a double Major in Math + CS while only having Standard level Math. Im 22. I have worked internships and it's mad fun too. Law seems so boring to me, just paperwork if you ask me. I know it's more than that but it's difficult to become a Barrister.

I must add, try not to focus on the money aspect. It is important but try to study CS out of enjoyment of the material rather than the prize. It's about the journey not the destination.

I faced the same exact question (I'm from the UK), and I have decided to study law. So I'm studying law now and support myself as a web developer. You don't need a degree to be programmer, but if you intend to study anything then law is something usefull and interesting (to me at least).

I don't think money is everything as a barrister you can actually do something that's really usefull for the community if you chooses.

I still love to code and enjoy what I do.

But it's only my opinion, do what your heart tells you.

I have seen a lot of people "in it for money" and they are just horrible software engineers because they don't actually care about the profession. These folks rarely excel at the position and have to side-step into other titles (PM, business analyst, etc.) that require less technical knowledge. That is perfectly okay, I don't look down upon people or anything like that, just observations.

I also work with excellent software engineers that don't have CS degrees. The basics of what someone needs to know to be a good software engineer is available freely online to self-learn. If you don't have any interest in just taking an online free CS class or figuring out how things work without a financial incentive then maybe this profession isn't for you. Constant learning is part of the career. Try some CS classes before committing to a decision.

> I swore I would never be any country's bitch ever again

Seriously research visa programs for the US. You may be in the same scenario, just a different country. Or if the visa program is smooth for university you may end up "be a company's bitch" because then a work visa requires sponsorship by a company. There are many companies (typically smaller, like startups) that won't hire on visa's because they don't have the legal or financial capacity to sponsor. Heck some of them restrict their hiring to one or two US states because they don't have the HR/payroll side of things setup for other states.

Don’t.

A lot of people in CS are passionate about what they’re doing. They start early (in their early teen), and just love it. They breath and live for it. You’re never going to measure up to them cause it’s all very technical, and quite boring to most outsiders.

You also need a certain mindset to be good at it, which you can’t know cause you’ve never tried it.

If you’re not excellent at it, you won’t get rich at all. You’ll get middle class, which is fine for most, but you won’t retire in your 30 and pursue an acting career.

If what you really want to is acting. Do it now. Acting requires a lot of training. And when you’re 30, it’s kind of late to get in the game.

If you want to do acting for fun while making money with a full time job, go and work in finance. It’s a little complicated but not too much, and you’ll find most people there are in it for the money. With some work, you’ll get good salaries quickly.

And honestly change your attitude. You’re coming across as an entitled brat who thinks everything is easy for them and you could be just as good an engineer as you’d be an actor. Life ain’t that easy.

Passion verses Money – a different story

When I graduated university, with CS, I had a number of friends who were biology majors. Myself I had a passion for CS so I was fortunate in that way.

My friends who were biology majors all had a passion for biology. To them their choice was as obvious as mine.

We all obtained jobs after university. Mine was a 50 to 60 hours a week doing SW development, which I loved. The biology majors, at that time and location, could only find a job at the waste processing plant. Sadly their pay was just above minimum wage. All of them lamented to me how they regretted their degree and wish they had been like me and had a degree in something that paid well.

Roll forward a few years and I am working at another company and I, and half the other software engineers get laid off. Went from 200 to about 100. Of the 100 of us let go, about 30 of the people, who had been in SW development for a number of years, all cried, “Thank GOD! I have always hated this”. This surprised me. I naively assumed everyone would do what they loved.

End result (TL;DR):

Step 1 – what will make you enough money to make you happy – (need to really analyze what you need to be happy, the answer of a 6 figure salary is too flippant to be accurate).

Step 2 - List those jobs that pay enough.

Step 3 - Of those jobs trim out jobs you would hate or are incapable of.

Step 4 - With the remaining apply a financial delta based on how much it is worth to you to do a job you love verses a job you are willing to do.

Having said all of that I am looking to taking a lesser job soon as I do not enjoy my current type of work as much as I thought I would.

Do something you like. If you do, there is a good chance you’ll rise at the top 30%

If not, you risk being at the bottom 30%.

There is a field called "international law". It pays pretty well. And you wouldn't have to reside in any particular country to do it.

Research if you can get rich in your country with cs. In The Netherlands you can’t, unless you’re top of the 1% in the HFT space.

I did cs for the money. I was also mildly interested in it. A few things I have noticed.

1. CS is not math, I suck at math but am ok at CS, including datastructures and algorithms

2. It’s a lot of step by step thinking. I didn’t know that beforehand and I like step by step thinking.

3. It’s also wrapping your head around a “world”. Example: I had a lot of difficulty understanding what servers were. In part, it’s because I am Dutch and “server” sounds like “waiter” and I would then ask why a computer needs to be a waiter. The better you are at English, the easier it is. And god forbid that I understood what caches are. I am so thankful I learned about geocaching (a game) on HN. It made it a lot more clear.

4. Following HN while learning cs makes it a lot more fun

5. Hacking is not cs. Try it, you might like it. Also, reverse engineering feels really different to other forms of hacking

Neither. If you want to become wealthy - study business skills (sales, marketing, negotiation, market research, media buying, etc.) and look into starting doing something business-y as soon as possible. As a starting point it could be small-scale freelancing, such as making spokesperson or demo videos for brands, which would also help your aspiration to become an actor. Look into location-independent ways to make money online, but watch out for predatory fake gurus out there.

Be careful with your expectations to become rich in software if you have written zero lines of code (HTML doesn't count) at this point. You may hear about six-figure salaries and lamentations on the supposed developer shortage. However getting from zero lines of code to six figure SV salary (or even any kind of paid developer position) will be a significant challenge, especially if you don't have an intrinsic motivation to do technical work. Software is a bit of gold rush right now and extrinsic motivation can only take you so far when you try to practice dry-as-fuck theoretical CS puzzles in order to pass the interview, or when debugging a gnarly bug.

Lastly, employment is not that good of a way to become wealthy, as it entails making money on someone else's terms. It is in their best interest to pay you as little money as they can get away with. On the other hand, being self-employed enables you to offer your work to market on your own terms, at the price you decide. There's no upper (or lower) bound on how much you can make.