Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Having 5 years of experience matters more than what the exact degree is.
That said - having something that says CS on your resume will get you through a lot of HR screens. Remember for each job a company posts, 100s of resumes come in. They might phone screen 4-5 candidates and bring in 1-2. The job of your resume is to get you from the door to the phone screen.
Once you are past the HR droid - your degree doesn't matter, your technical skills do... And trust me - I can tell if you have what I am looking for, and I don't care if you have a minor in CS, a partial degree, or a degree in animal husbandry.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
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
This comes up on slashdot all the time. As a relatively long time (15+ yrs) non-pointy-haired boss who hires developers, the degree does not matter as much as the person. Some of my best programmers barely finished secondary school.
Common sense, the ability to work with others *gasp*, work habits, and organization skills are more important than the quality of a piece paper you bring into my office. We can teach any other skills that are required if someone is passionate enough about technology.
If, however, you are interested in the coursework, then by all means do it.
"This mission is too important to allow you to jeopardize it." -- HAL
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.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
If you are, then get your B.A. and get out. The last thing you need is another semester (another 12%!) on your school loan payments. Your degree gets you your first job. Your first job gets you your second job. And so forth. So, if you want your first job to be CS-related, that's one thing, but otherwise save your money for better things.
Huh? Who else is qualified to do surveys at the mall?
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.
A minor in CS is worth more the a degree in Pysch.
Money's not the most important thing, but that's good information, thanks.
You might as well have majored in dance.
I could still switch to a music major and start earning really big bucks. But I want to graduate before I'm 50.
I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.
You should look into studying human factors engineering/human-computer interaction. Having both psych and CS/programming skills makes you pretty quickly employable, especially if you have a master's. Good luck.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
This is a huge problem that I see happen all the time, at many different companies that I do contract work for.
Instead of paying someone who really does now how to program (which includes being able to create a well thought-out design and actually implement it), the managers think they can save a few bucks by having an engineer who "knows" how to program hack something out real quick. It may be a few months down the road before it is realized that the program is crap and has to be completely redone. Then the company has to pay big bucks for someone like me to come in and fix things - much more than it would have cost them to hire someone with a CS degree to write the program in the first place.
"For example, just about every engineer can hack out a FORTRAN or C program, but almost no CS people can do engineering."
and "hack" (as in done blindly with an axe) would be an appropriate description of the way many of them "program".
Trust me. I've seen code from people with what you call "real degrees"
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Today's Irony Award goes to your signature.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I encourage every college student I know to take as many courses as they can in CS. Not because they will use them, but because almost any job these days requires interacting not only with computers but with computer people and it is good to have some clue as to what the computer is really doing and what the computer people are doing as well.
Lasers Controlled Games!
So how is this a problem?
1. Hacker writes Q&D program badly
2. Company tries to use it in poduction
3. Company finds out it sucks
4. Company hires you to fix it
5. PROFT!!!!
You get a beautiful program full of object-oriented highly encapsulated buzzword prettified heavy weight infrastructure.
But the computations don't conserve momentum.
Or money.
I.e. a "bad" program which does approximately the right thing to solve the problem is better than a beautiful program which does positively the wrong thing.
That certainly surprised the hell out of me, but apparently their skill set wasn't up to par from what my boss tells me! (what are they teaching you GT guys over there anyway?!?!)
The co-ops seem to do fairly well, and believe me, the school loves tooting their horn about that.
And I might be taking CS, but I definitely want to end up with more than just a CS degree and a job in IT.
For a few dollars (and about a semester) more, I can also minor in CS.
For a few dollars more, you can learn about C++ (the good), Java (the bad), and Perl (the ugly), get a job, and barely make from it all a fistful of dollars.
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
A must read : Undergraduation. ( and feedback from anon professors on this essay )
Yet Another College Advice Essay
Grab some microeconomics before you leave.
The following is from http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html
I know grand parent's post is flame bait, but he does have a slight point. A friend of mine just graduated with her BS in Psych, and they pretty much told her point blank you can't do very much with a BS/BA in Psych, you have to get your masters to do anything in the field. My advice, don't look at what's in demand / makes the most money, etc. The job market will be different when you graduate if you do so next semester or 4 years down the line. Choose something you enjoy, and can stand doing year in year out.
I think of a minor as potential icing on the cake with one's degree. For example, I got a Business Administration minor (2 additional semesters) while I got my BSCS, because I thought it would suggest to employers that I wasn't just a one-sided nerd, but had some business sense/appreciation for what goes on in "the real world".
In general I would say a CS minor looks very good accompanying a non-technical major, because it shows you have an interest in and can handle an increasingly technological world and workplace. But since you already have IT experience, I don't think it will help you any.
The question is, what do you ultimately want to do for a living? If it's programming, the vast majority of companies require at least a BS, in CS, or for some, in any math or engineering discipline.
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
I have over a decade of experience in the IT field, and from what I've seen, degrees are almost meaningless.
I've personally seen far, far too many employers treat a degree like a check box on a form - either you've got one, or you don't. Experience is much more valuable than your major/minor is.
I'm kinda doing the same. I'm going to go the psych route, but I'm a local geek for my university (I manage a small office that does R&D for psychometric instruments and assessment tools).
:-) I make more on the music side these days than with computers or psych, but I think if I had taken actual classes, it'd be just like my lit degree when I never want to write fiction again.
Knowing the market out there, depending on how you want to go, there is a LOT of need for folks that can think both logically and know technology.
I'm not sure how much you can do without a masters in this field (though I have done a lot of consulting in this area without a degree in either area...though I'd cheated my name on a few publications and work a few conferences in this area a year).
But really, the tech side of things is needed.
As for the music major...nah...you'd never make any money with this
Send me an email if you are interested in CS and Psych...
I happen to be a Systems/Networking person, and I ended up *not* minoring in CS because the CS track at the school I was attending was 95% programming. I took 1 CS course (C++), learned nothing except syntax (which I learned mostly from online HOWTO's), and never took another.
If there were more courses in focusing on Networking or System Administration, I'd have taken more. So, check what is offered before you leap in!
Don't save Windows XP! http://www.petitiononline.com/jjw1xp/petition.html
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 took the extra courses that I needed for a CS minor, and it was totally worth it. The classes provided me with a background in programming that is useful for any technical professsion. You learn how to reason more logically and break down problems into easily solvable segments. Aside from the programming knowledge, you also gain an understanding of tools like ssh, vpn and samba that help you work more effectively in a connected office..... and MOST importantly it got my foot in the door. No companies were that interested in my major (they didn't really understand it), but as soon as I mentioned I had a CS minor it was a totally different ballgame. Take the extra classes, you won't regret it!
In linux libertas
Sadly, I don't even consider a BS in CS to be worth much these days. My feeling in talking with graduates is that the dot com bubble watered down most Universities' CS programs... and I say that coming from a pretty highly ranked CS school. In my opinion, CS programs should focus on less programming and more CS/Math as they seem to just be churning out programmers, not scientists.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
Disclaimer: I majored in computer science and am currently employed as a software developer (lead programmer on a significant project).
Computer science, in and of itself, isn't particularly commercially viable anymore, what with outsourcing, offshoring, H1-Bs and L-1's getting most of the jobs... You shouldn't look at the question of whether to study computer science as an economic one. It isn't going to make you a penny, unless you major in it and leave the private sector, or go all the way and become a faculty member. It's the new liberal art, you know?
Having said that, it's one of the most valuable things you can study. Virtually everything will one day be done by or with computers, over networks. Knowledge of computer science is power. And the more you know, the more power you have.
A minor in computer science will magnify your abilities in your major field of study. It will support you, and let you achieve things other people find mystifying. Let's say you're a historian. While other historians are futzing around with paper notes and cards, you build a database to store your notes and create an interface to it on your PDA. Or maybe you're a biologist, and you catalog your samples that way.
Other people will notice what you can do and ask you to help them. You'll gain a bargaining chip, something valuable you can trade for what YOU need.
And in everything you do, you'll be more efficient than your colleagues -- provided you take advantage of it.
So, yeah, I'd say go for it. Just don't expect it to pay off directly in money or marketability.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
...I have a degree in Pysch and a Masters in Eng. Without wishing to sound like I'm crowing I cannot keep up with the amount of business being put my way. I started off in academia but I was getting so much consultancy pressed on me that in the end it was pointless to fight it (thats actual consultancy not being a contractor btw). Theres a major skill gap in our field, everyone wants safety and HSE (or at least needs someone to sign off on them) but theres hardly anyone to do it. So get a qualification in Ergonomics (whatevers recognised in your territory) and your Psych/CS degree will make more sense.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
I agree for a lot of jobs like networking or database management or even programming, a CS degree is not really needed. However, get the CS minor. It will make you a better person for it. Also, you will meet people of similar interest which may lead you to contacts in the future. Would a piece of paper that says minor mean anything? Probably not. I have a Math minor and probably qualify for a CS minor if my school offered it and I don't think I got anything concrete out of it, but the fact that I met interesting people out of it. People that may start the next Google. I'm not sure of many psych people I can name that I would feel the same way.
I wouldn't worry about the minor. If you like it, go ahead and take it. More subjects will do you good. But I mean that in a personal growth kind of way - don't expect a future employer to care much, if at all.
I graduated as a CS major, and to be honest I'd have been better off if I'd taken something else. I'd probably still have my unix sysadmin job, and I've have had the chance to take some more interesting courses.
i don't think having a minor around while doing cs is a necessity...
:( ...
this reminds me of a bash quote btw:
#352172 +(3506)- [X]
NHBoy: I broke my G-string while fingering a minor
rycool:
NHBoy: I was trying to play Knocking on Heaven's Door.
NHBoy: Oh well, time to buy new strings.
1. People (especially self-proclaimed techno-geniuses) often look down on Psych majors trying to play with technology. The minor will help with that - especially if 2 years from now you decide to work in IT.
2. Perhaps more importantly, people hiring into positions that would entertain a psychology degree are very happy to have someone on their side to help them deal with those nasty nerds. Perhaps reason 1 has something to do with this feeling?
3. Most positions require a level of computer savvy these days. Even if it's a simple as knowing how to graph data points in Excel or helping with Internet applications.
4. It rounds out your education and demonstrates that you can perform well in left-brained a right-brained tasks. This is not common and positions you well within the marketplace. It's very common for non-technical managers to look at a resume and say "too geeky" or for technical managers to say "no tech skills"
A few hundred dollars is nothing if it helps you as much as I think it will.
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.
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...)
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
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.
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.
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!"
To be a manager usually requires at least a BA in B.S.
Please not that there is no BS in B.S. as it is a fine art and not an exact science =]
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Absolutely. On the other hand, if you don't go ahead and get the minor in computer science, what do you answer when someone asks "so, you claim to be really interested in computers... why didn't you take more computer science courses at university?"
"I'm interested in computers, not computer science."
And then explain the statement. I know CS professors that have no idea if the system on their desk is from Sun or SGI. And they don't need to -- they work in abstractions and barely need actual software, let alone a physical computer.
I'm not degrading all you CS majors -- pure math is cool and all that, and we definitely *need* that aspect. And having that theoretical background is great for a programmer or designer. However, for many computer-related job, someone who didn't take any CS classes but is a serious geek at heart will be better.
Thank you everyone who commented, especially those with CS minors (or those fingering them). This is exactly the kind of reality check I needed. I'm still going to forge ahead with the minor, but not out of the hope that it will land me a job (though it was heartening to hear that it may have made the difference in getting a couple of people jobs).
The HCI tangent really interests me, and I googled upon the HCI Bibliography:
http://www.hcibib.org/
That's enough to keep me busy for a while. Maybe in a couple of years I'll be asking the same question about the CS Master's.
I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.
is a legally mandated area of analysis in the chemical, heavy industrial, nuclear, transport and defence industries. Theres plenty of work out there. What you say is a truism; HCI is an academic term not used outside. As the grandparent gets right first time, Human Factors (or some variant with the word "safety" in often) is the industrial term, but much of it will be HCI in nature (where its referred to as Human Systems Engineering btw).
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
I am a mechanical engineer with a 2nd major in mathematics. I took Choas/Dynamical Systems, Linear Algrebra, and Complex Analysis to get the double major. I think this actually hurt me while interviewing to work in industry as a M.E. The stereotypical math nerd doesn't possess the hands-on, get-it-done attitude that a sucessful engineer has. I'm glad that I got the 2nd major but I would have played it off as trivial when job hunting if I had it to do over.
Simple people talk of people, better people talk of events, great people talk of ideas.
Heh,
my girlfriend has an MS (MA? Not sure how it's classified in Swiss universities) in psych (along with a few sub-degree type things in French and business) and she got an offer from one of the big 5 (at the time) consulting outfits pretty handily. There is, in a lot of companies, pretty hefty demand for that sort of academic background. She makes more than most prestigious-school-CS-graduates I know (I graduated from Berkeley, so that's quite a few.)
Come to think of it, I've a degree in a piddly-squat international relations type field--(a) it was interesting, (b) I dropped out of CS because it was too much of a fucking nightmare, and (c) it was easy--and I make more than most prestitious-school-CS-graduates I know. Doing IT consulting, natch. I enjoy my company, my work, my clients, and my lifestyle.
So keep hanging on to the generalizations, kiddo. They're pretty amusing for the rest of us.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage