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My Parent doesn't want me doing CS, or CE, because they feel the job market will disappear come 7 years. (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago by aunchers@lemmy.world to c/cs_career_questions@programming.dev

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Basically Title.
I love CS, I love designing systems, programming, some cyber and math.
The problem is, I am due to admit into CS this year (4 year program). My Parent's will be funding a majority of it (~2 years, + RESP). And one of my parents, thinks CS won't have many jobs come 7 years?
Why? Because AI will take them all (or is more likely to take them all). That AI is expanding at a rapid pace, and they will slowly but surely take the hardware designing jobs, the programming jobs, and pretty much all the jobs except the administration ones. I have a poor time putting into words what I would like to do in the future (cause I love lots of things related to CS) but I say thing a bit on the technical side, and this parent says that if I cant explain it to them than I don't understand it and that they understand (more to me) what will happen to the market due to their age

I am not saying they're wrong to any of this by the way, I'm just looking for advice on if they're right, and if not, why?

I don't think I'll ever give up doing CS because its something I love with all my heart.
But if I'm not able to convince them, they want me to take a gap and get a different degree (in a less likely to be taken job).
I might be rambling here, but I am genuinely soooo lost.

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[–] QDgwZjQYdfbnMdMNQ@lemmy.cafe 5 points 3 days ago

I'm not an expert on AI, but I do have a degree in CS and have worked at a job related to CS for around five years now.

From what I know, I think probably most jobs in CS are not going to be replaced because AI has some fundamental shortcomings compared to a human in terms of long-term planning and creativity, among others, and it doesn't seem like that shortcoming is going to be solved any time soon (maybe things will be different in another 20 years, but I have no confidence in predicting technology that far out). AI can make a simple website, but it can't do a lot of the art required for game dev, nor can it make the right decisions required for making a large, stable application. It has its uses, but it's not all-powerful, nor can it do everything, especially without people to tweak things and act as guard-rails.

That said, the job market is not great right now, and from what I've heard, the CS job market has been especially bad since Covid ended and the demand for online services went down because people were able to go outside again. I would assume things would be more stable 7 years from now, but who knows? I would be very surprised if the current CS job slump lasted that long (since it's already been ongoing for a while), but it's entirely possible that something else will come up in that time.

If by cyber, you mean cybersecurity, then you could probably get a job doing that (governments tend to hire a lot of people interested in cybersecurity, and they have a lot of extra scholarship opportunities), but you might not be programming as much. Depending on your interests, that may or may not be a dealbreaker.

Not sure that I could do much to help convince your parents if that's their current take on AI, but if AI is so good, wouldn't it be valuable to learn how to make an AI yourself and/or work for an AI company? I know someone who dual majored in Math and CS, who learned enough in college to be able to create an LLM from scratch, so it's not impossible to learn in school if you take the right elective classes.

Either way, hopefully my advice is helpful to you.