Is CompSci right for me?

Question

Gonna be honest, I am mainly doing this for the money and WFH/Remote possibilities.

To note, I’m 23, going back to school in the fall. And I am horrendously bad at math due to a learning disability and asbergers.

After juggling with what I wanna do with life, I looked into a software engineer career, and I decided to go forward with it. I know not every position right out of school pays top dollar.

My question is kinda a 2 parter. Is software engineering right for me?

My second question is for anyone in the role. Starting out or not, people work alot of hours in this role. Do you get paid OT for it? If not, what’s really the point of working a lot, especially starting out, if you’re not making any extra money?

maverick233 · Accepted Answer

Whether it is right for you is something you'll have to discover in time. Try getting involved in some small projects either at school or as a hobby, and see how it makes you feel. Particularly, projects where you need to work with other people to build something.
One thing to consider is that while the money can be good, it can also have its downsides, and no amount of money is worth doing something that doesn't work for you or align with your values.

What's overtime?
Jokes aside, most folks in software don't get paid OT. You're typically on a salary, and while you may work OT you don't usually get paid for it. Depending on the company, there may be time in lieu offered, or your schedule may be flexible enough that working late may be offset by starting later the next day, but it depends.
It's really important to develop clear and healthy boundaries for work life balance.

Sho · Answer

If you have Asperger's syndrome, nowadays it's back inside the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), then there is much more to think about and say than just salary, overtime, SWE.Google the published autism study that compared Cambridge students with the rest of the population and with the Autistic group. Then pay attention to results in the 4 groups; computer science, physics, mathematics, and a tiny sample of the International Mathematical Olympiad gold medal winners studying at Cambridge at the time the study was conducted. You'll find some amazing stuff there.In addition, I'd recommend you check out a YouTube channel called "Autism from the inside". The guy running it, Paul, was an aerospace engineer and he explains how he realised he was different, why he was good at something, why se struggled, how he masked (a.k.a. masking and coping mechanisms), how he deals with "neurotypicals", how he realised his job was not what he wanted in life, and much more.Now, back to maths and CS and SWE... It's great of one can be a genius or at least excel in "every field".of maths. But it turns out maths is much bigger than those maths subject(s) you disliked. It may be that your environment wasn't the right environment for you and your learning and motivation needs. It may be that you haven't bumped into the maths you may like and excel in. Or it may be you didn't encounter a way of teaching, presenting science, or learning, that works for you.Maths is like sport or art or science or anything else in life: you don't have to excel in each area of it, nor even on the most areas; most of the time it's enough you figure out bits you need or that make you fulfilled.And you may be in luck: with the invention and then rapid development of internet, mobile devices, and now AI, you don't have to "know" everything; many times you need to have a good feeling about what to ask, where, and when, and now you can ask AI and have it as your own mentor and right-hand support. Use it as much as you need or want....To summarise ... use AI to summarise it for you. 😉 Write a good prompt, try a couple of LLM's to compare, see if you like it, and if that experience makes your day - you and I, my comrade and friend, will be better off than we were before we had this imaginary (or at least asynchronous) "conversation".Check out the Cambridge study on Autism, check out Paul's "Autism from the inside" YouTube channel, find a support group and educate yourself about what Autism is and means and how that neurodevelopmental difference affects routines, likes and dislikes, habits, interpersonal communication and relationships, interests, pleasures, how "others" see those with ASD, and find your own groove.And, by the way, some of the best software engineers (and programmers, and mathematicians, and physicists) that I know, have ASD, ADHD, both ASD and ADHD, or even some other exotic "cocktail". Check if you have ADHD, find online resources to get a feel of whether you might be ADHD as well, find a great psychiatrist with expertise and experience in working with ADHD people, and get the necessary medication for ADHD (if you have ADHD) - because without the medication life can be filled with "mysterious failures" and sprinkled with "expected successes".Again, I can vouch for a lot of super smart ASD and/or ADHD folks who went on to enjoy their life adventures. Some are highly paid software engineers.And you know why SWE? Because it's *predictable*: for your well-thoughtout input there is an *expected* output (or *explainable* error). Many times (but not always) people with Asperger enjoy that, rather than small talk and stuff that "make no sense".But, as the saying goes, "if you've met one autistic person - you've literally met *one* autistic person",  and it's up to you to find your groove and your niche and your life's pleasures. Best if you don't torture yourself and don't compare yourself to others, but find what works for you given the "constraints of your life's reality".Best of luck, comrade and friend!

aw2232 · Answer

At 23 you probably don't have a great feel for what you actually like.Theres other jobs out there that are WFH and pay decently well.I didn't get started with SWE until I was in my 30s and finished a math degree. Before that, I was a journalist, in the marine corps, worked on a cattle farm and also did a brief stint as a bartender.You're still young. I would take some time to explore what you actually like doing, and then do that — college or no college.

2BeTopTierDev · Answer

Without the passion you won’t get far unless you’re naturally talented or a genius or something.

bob123345678 · Answer

I wouldn’t have characterized myself as good at math when starting out, and during my degree I definitely struggled with the discrete math requirement. Turns out I really enjoyed machine learning from the beginning, and I found an application of CS and specifically machine learning that I enjoyed as well (biology). I’m now about 12 years in. I’ve spent a lot of self development time slowly getting better at math as it applies to machine learning, mostly so I can follow papers. This came slowly over years, I didn’t get there as fast as a lot of sharp math wiz grads. That said I really enjoy it, so sticking with it has been enjoyable. I’ve always had reasonable boundaries about work/life. I think at worst I was probably doing like 50 hour weeks for a startup I helped get off the ground. I know some people did more but I always focused on being as efficient as possible with my time and that has worked. I would say that you will probably struggle if money is your only motivation. It’s not an easy profession, especially in the beginning, but I still have moments where it feels hard. It’s probably worth giving it a try and seeing if there are areas that interest you? Maybe read about some of the cool applications of computer science to other domains and see if any of those seem exciting, or perhaps even a more pure/within domain application like artificial general intelligence or something? For me money was absolutely a consideration, but my interest in applications is what has kept me going.

Is CompSci right for me?

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