My son is going to start college. He is interested in computers and also like to work on hardware stuff. He wanted to major in computer engineering. My feeling is there is going to be less and less demand for hardware only talents in the future so my suggestion is to go for Computer science and learn as much as hardware related courses so he can stay flexible and have the best of both worlds. Wanted to ask the community here and seek your advice. Thanks so much!#hardware #engineer #college #admissions
Computer engineering fascinates me but the thought of the ridiculous level of math I’m assuming it requires scares me out of it
I felt your pain. Back in my days, there weren't Indian YouTubers to help explain math in a different way from the textbook. Things weren't clicked to me until I started doing calculations for circuit theory and electronic courses.
Yeah, I am in HW and took electrical engineering back in school, I don’t regret it. But I felt hardware engineers nowadays have to work a lot harder but still payed less. And the problem is I am still seeing the trend worsening.
What's the difference? Both degrees requires Computer Architecture and Algorithms. Electives are useless in job searching.
LC has poisoned your mind
LC has broken your brain fam
I am seeing CS graduates get good jobs regardless which schools they are from, while CE graduates kind of need to “proof” themselves more or have more advanced degrees.
I know several ECE students getting multiple offers from FAANG. The degree is just not very common. Leetcode is all you need. Do you have evidence CE graduates being looked down on in the SWE job market?
If the CompEng has CompSci classes, then do it. If the Computer Degree has no CompSci, it’s useless. I am a CompInfoSys major. Had I minored in CompSci, my life would be completely different, but I fell behind. Learned to code last year and got a great job.
EE is 90/10 HW / SW. CS is 10/90. CE is closer to 50/50 (maybe 60/40). I think CE will be fine to get any range of SW jobs if that is what is desired and I would argue that SWEs with solid hardware understanding make better programmers.
Not sure if they are looked down but it’s probably fair to say CE graduates are at disadvantage when they still get mostly SWE jobs and they have to compete with CS graduates.
I agree if you can leetcode equally well. But the problem is a CE graduate will only be able to use maybe 50% of what they learned at school to compete with CS. That’s what I mean by disadvantage.
Depends on what SWE domain. If you work as SWE on embedding systems, networking, compilers and architecture, ECE definitely has an advantage. CS degree is the most suitable for SWE in machine learning and distributed systems, as you don't spend time learning frontend or hardware staff. If you just want to work on full stack, backend or data engineering, CS degree is an overkill. Your son can definitely perform the same (or even better with business acumen) with a MIS degree.
CE all the way. Good programs will equip the graduate for careers on both hardware or software, though some tilt in either direction is possible. They also teach students how to *think* like and engineer: pragmatism, risk management, contingencies, design, comms, planning etc. Finally, I’ll be brutally honest here: CS is where CE students who couldn’t hack it washed out to, not the other way around. Think about that. Not to say there aren’t brilliant CS folks (there are!), but CE programs tend to be technically rigorous and challenging (few in my year even bothered to study for CS courses — these were the “easy” courses since most of us had been coding since we were kids and the eng courses were far more difficult/heavy), as such it attracts students commensurately. The resulting eng training/knowledge provides an edge (IMO) if they are to be “builders” vs “researchers”, as well as what range of careers they can persue. This all said…. if you want your kid to be rich, do CS and then encourage them to drop out. Ellison, Zuckerberg, Gates… all CS drop outs! 😃. No surprise to me… the same training which makes you a good engineer, probably makes you a terrible entrepreneur.
I would qualify this a bit and CS does have a large portion of people who select it by choice. But it is also where people who can't handle CE end up. Oh, and CE is where people who can't handle EE end up. :)
Absolutely correct on EE drop outs ending up in CE. 😃 And yes, there are many people who choose CS by choice, and probably would be successful doing anything.
You’ll both regret if you chose CE. My friends who did these hardware got slaughtered by hard classes with low GPA. Meanwhile many who took the pure CS route had less rapey classes (less/no physics, no assembly language, etc). CS had GPA padded and spent their summers at FAANG / Quant firms making 150-200k+ prorated while the CE people look bad and are struggling to just find a single internship. Please remember you can learn anything you want without getting killed
And my point is that this is what you see now and the gap looks like is going to be even bigger as time goes on.
CS if you want high pay and get into latest technologies in AI/ML/Computer Vision. Easy to get a high paying job with pure comp. Science degrees than computer engineering. I still regret it; Me being a CE major as my friends in CS into sw getting paid 2x and easily able to move from one FANG to another.
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I went for computer engineering. I like building things like embedded systems, IoT, software/hardware integration. Computer science will go deep into the theory of algorithms and data structure. Oftentimes those get abstracted into libraries that you can just call with a few lines of code instead of implementing from scratch. In the first year of school both disciples tend to have similar classes together (electrical engineering too). Maybe see if he's willing to do some classes from each degree to see which one he enjoys learning the most. Maybe talk to an advisor or counselor to see if he can audit some classes. You can easily find out in a month or so on which one is his cup of tea. My colleagues who graduated from computer science were quick at understanding new concepts introduced to the team while ECE can yolo their ways into things. It's really up to the individual in the end to learn and get relevant skills for work, but I find computer science subjects in college dreadful to go through (could just be the professors were hard to form connections).