The Future of IT in America?

tomocoo asks: "As a young person considering various choices for the future career I'd like to pursue, IT and computer science continually reappear near the top of the list of fields I'm interested in. In fact, one of my only hesitations is the suspected ease by which programming and other related tasks can be sent to other countries for pennies on the dollar. How much of a threat do the readers of Slashdot feel outsourcing is to the American programmer? Should I and other young people be pursuing something more specialized or have I simply been watching too much CNN?"

Comments

Re:You don't want Computer Science

[NitsujTPU]

I don't know about that.

I'm getting a PhD in Computer Science in the Fall. I earned by B.S. in 2001, and started up as a software engineer at a defense contractor after that. Right now, I'm a researcher at an Ivy League university's Computer Science department. I write software, and lots of it, to support my research.

Largely, Computer Science can be divided into:

Systems
Theory
and
*Wildcard (but, usually people say "Artificial Intelligence" here)

As for undergrad CS, I'd say it's mostly programming and theory, with some application specific stuff thrown in (databases, artificial intelligence, robotics, games, graphics).

My first year was entirely programming, and, that's what incoming freshmen can expect here. I think that what drove people out is that it wasn't networking, configuring computers, "IT" stuff. They also didn't like that it was hard. They were "good with computers," but that didn't make them programmers. The first couple classes are weed-outs to make sure that they won't hate programming too much their sophomore year and feel stuck when they're in their junior year, having only done the requirements to declare for computer science, and need a whole mess of classes to jump into Mechanical Engineering or Chemical Engineering.

Most of the people that I know who majored in Computer Science became programmers when they got out of school, and I know relatively few schools that offer "software engineering" as its own major.

I say this with all due respect to you, but, seriously, I don't think this is very good advice at all.

Supplemtal Computer Science.

[jellomizer]

I would suggest that you take a Supplemental Major/Minor with your Computer Science Degree. Things like Computer Science/(Business, Engineering (Non Computer Engineering), Physical Sciences, etc...) That way your skills are targeted beyond just a Programmer but to a professional who is useful to your future employer on multiple levels. You can easily outsource a Programmer, but a Programmer who understands something else the business needs is much harder.

Think about transitions too

[eddeye]

Remember that an IT degree doesn't necessarily limit you to a job in the IT field. Besides the many jobs open to anyone with a college degree, you can use your technical background to move into other fields. Combine it with biochemistry for a job in the pharmaceutical industry. A solid math background is attractive to financial companies. Physics, geology, climatology, accounting, library science -- the list is virtually endless. There will always be options available to people willing and able to use their technical background outside of IT and programming.

I went from an MS in computer science to software developer to teaching cs to law school. Law is an incredibly broad field and technical skills will serve you well in any area, not just intellectual property.