How Valuable is a Minor in Computer Science?

DenmaFat asks: "I'm an IT person finally finishing my BA (in Psych) at a big state U. For a few dollars (and about a semester) more, I can also minor in CS. I'll probably do it anyway, because I love the subject matter, but I'm wondering what the value of a CS minor is in the job market. Are there any CS minor holders who can speak from experience on this one?"

Comments

Maybe, I think

[sribe]

I don't have good experience to answer from. But as a business owner with a highly technical background, I would indeed value a CS minor for sales, marketing and support type of positions. I think it would be quite helpful to have people in those not-strictly-technical positions who could have an understanding of the technology that was deeper than the typical "salesworm" grasp. I don't know what your job plans are, but I think I remember reading somewhere that people with psych degrees can often be successful in sales.

Of course if I were hiring you to be my shrink, I wouldn't give a flying one whether or not you had a minor in CS ;-)

Re:Maybe, I think

[c0reboarder]

I recently graduated with a major in CS and a minor in Mathematics from a not so major university. But, I did manage to land a great job at a major healthcare software company. I know quite a few people in my same position that did graduate from big name universities that don't have majors in related fields, but minored in CS. My company looks for BRIGHT individuals with at least SOME background in CS, and then trains you for your role. This is because so many roles are things that are new to the industry and no matter who you are you probably wouldn't have much experience (exceptions are of course GUI programmers with tons of VB experience etc), but there are plenty of roles in a company like mine where a minor in CS could get you the job.

Go for it.

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

It will mean next to nothing in a small to medium company, but might make a big difference someday in government or a large corporation.

Who fucking knows

[Anonymous Coward]

I got my programming job because I have a minor in psychology, and my boss is an emotional nitwit.

If you like the courses and are challenged by them, take them. Same applies to basket weaving. You can make a living doing lots of stuff.

Re:CS minor better than CS major

[mschaffer]

What a typical, moronic CS reply. Actually, don't you mean "hack", (as in done blindly with an axe) like a CS person trying to do math.

Well, we have tried to use CS people, and I have seen the code, too.

The usual result is that the engineer's code works. The engineer's code gets the job done. And, it didn't take freaking 1.5 years to explain it to the dumb-ass CS person who doesn't know jack sh*t about differential equations and physical chemistry.

People with "real degrees", like engineers, tend to pick-up very sophisticated programming concepts and can write very good code.

Lots of CS people cannot multiply without firing up a copy of the Python IDE, and you wonder why I want someone with a "real degree" that can program.

Also, I am not exaggerating. We wasted 1.5 years with a programmer writing code under the direction of some engineers. Out of desparation, I gave the project to some engineering grad students to work on. They were done in a month!

Go for the non CS major!!!
----'nuf said.

I had a CS Minor and now have a job in Tech.

[sho222]

Quickly breezing through the replies to your post, it looks like I might be the first person to reply who can actually speak from experience.

I graduated during the downfall of dot-coms with a BA in Economics/Finance, and a minor is CS. Being stubborn, I shunned the i-banking jobs my fellow Econ majors were taking and still went for a job in technology (even though they were in scarce supply). I ended up finding a great company that was more interested in hiring smart people than what letters they had on their degree. The one requirement my company has when evaluating candidates (besides high GPA) is that candidates must show a passion for technology. I can safely say (because I confirmed it after getting the job) that the CS minor on my resume, along with the related work I had done during my time at school, was the element that put my resume near the top of the stack and landed me the interviews. A CS minor is not where it ends -- you'll have to prove your skills and knowledge during interviews, for sure, but having a CS minor can be a huge boost to your overall package and help get your foot in the door.

Once you are in the real world, the difference between having a CS Major and CS Minor will fade pretty quickly, IMHO. In my experience, the basics that you learn from earning a CS minor (software design principles, data structures, etc.) are enough to put you in a position to learn the specific software design practices of the company that hires you. Chances are pretty good that everyone that starts at the same time as you will be learning a whole new set of company-specific tools and practices anyway. CS majors may have an upper hand just from their experience with how to solve CS problems, but if you have the passion, you'll put in the extra work it takes to catch up. It's also good to befriend the smartest you meet in your first week - if your company isn't highly competitive (and I think most tech shops aren't), you'll be able to learn a lot just by sharing experiences and get a little help once in a while when you're stumped.

So, the bottom line from my perspective is that if you seriously want a job in technology, go for the extra cs minor. Don't worry about the extra 12% in student loans that some other poster pointed out - you'll have those paid off way ahead of schedule if you're successful. If technology is where you want to make your succuess, a CS minor will do a hell of a lot more to get you there than just a Psych degree.

Re:CS minor better than CS major

[srmalloy]

What a typical, moronic CS reply. Actually, don't you mean "hack", (as in done blindly with an axe) like a CS person trying to do math.

Depends on the CS people. When I was in college, I was one of two undergrad CS majors who spanked an entire class of EE majors in an upper-division/graduate EE class that was essentially 'programming for direct hardware control' (i.e., writing code to control SIO chips). The professor had to give the two of us 'A's and grade the rest of the class on a curve so he wouldn't have to fail 3/4 of the class. (Having the department undergoing accreditation probably affected his decision in that regard...)

Well, we have tried to use CS people, and I have seen the code, too.

And I saw the code of the EE majors in that class; I'd never seen someone screw up a bubble-sort function before... And these were upper-division and graduate EE students

People with "real degrees", like engineers, tend to pick-up very sophisticated programming concepts and can write very good code.

Whether a CS major has a 'real' degree depends more on the CS program than the person; where I went to college, the difference in course requirements between a BA in CS and a BS in Math with an emphasis in CS was nine units of upper-division math; three upper-division classes isn't going to make much of a difference in your ability to write good code.

Lots of CS people cannot multiply without firing up a copy of the Python IDE, and you wonder why I want someone with a "real degree" that can program.

Aside from the pitfalls associated with sweeping generalizations like this, I wonder how much of the semicompetent CS people you've seen have been people who went into CS because it looked like they could make a lot of money at it, not because it was something they wanted to do.

Also, I am not exaggerating. We wasted 1.5 years with a programmer writing code under the direction of some engineers. Out of desparation, I gave the project to some engineering grad students to work on. They were done in a month!

So either the programmer wasn't able to write code, or the engineers weren't able to communicate effectively with non-engineers. Either conclusion is viable, and your experiment didn't rule out the second option.

--
"Four years ago, I couldn't even spell engineer, and now I are one!"