but we were forcefed STEM at every turn by school, media, and most importantly, our parents. It’s where the money is, and not money for money’s sake, but money for job and financial security. Clearly, the siren song was hard to resist, not just for me, but for droves of people my age.
Great post that I feel like is more relevant than ever. I don’t regret my decision in pursuing CS because I’m quite passionate for it, but I know a few peers that regret it (one of which switched to another college 3 years into his Bachelor’s).
There’s definitely a lot of misleading that happens when people talk about tech jobs. One of the first lectures in my college was the professor praising people for choosing CS, assuring them it’s the right choice, then showing us a graph of average salaries in the industry. “You see, web developers earn $110K per year! Software engineers a little more so!”. It also came with more talk about how companies are always on the lookout for talent and finding a job should be super easy compared to other fields.
Maybe that was the case ~10 years ago, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be now. I hope that more instructors would be more honest that CS is not for everyone, it’s a long and difficult journey that not everyone would want to put up with. It’s also not as lucrative and stable as some people romanticize it to be. Just my $0.02.
I earned a CS degree, and I love programming, but I wait tables. Gives me more time with my kids; and frankly, at the time I left school, most CS jobs involved doing things I found unethical, like SEO capture and HVT.
Interesting blog post. Given how society is overselling STEM these days, it’s worth a read.
One of the problems I see is that STEM is oversold as a career path and undersold as a, what, life skill? We need everyone to be literate, numerate, and have a decent grasp of the role of scientific methods in both understanding the world as it is and in how to best teach and learn things.
Yeah full agreement. Not everyone needs to be an engineer but everyone should have basic mechanical competence. Not everyone should be a scientist but everyone should understand why science works and that basically every bit of science they learned in school is simplified to the point of untruth, but generally applies. Not everyone needs to be a mathematician but math is true and useful and it shouldn’t scare you.
Agreed. A related problem is when those skill are oversold at the expense of humanities and arts. Everyone also needs at least a basic grasp of history, arts, and good communication skills.