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Source: Zhihu
Recently, the Internet has laid off employees, and some netizens have heatedly discussed: After the large-scale layoffs in 2022, will computer majors become the next civil engineering?
This year is my 12th year in this industry. I have seized the bonus period of this industry. I can buy a house, start a family and start a business in a first-tier city without relying on my family.
But looking back now, “being graduated, escaping from the Internet, and lying flat…” has become the main theme of this industry. Some colleagues around me have gone to state-owned and foreign companies one after another, lowering their salary expectations and turning to Seek stability and balance.
Is the Internet industry really dead? What will the future of computer science be like? Will it really become a “civil engineering major”?
An anonymous netizen wrote such an answer, I quite agree with it, and want to share it with you.
I have studied computer for 10 years, and I am still looking for a job. My dad has been working in civil engineering all his life, and he is still looking for a job. I don’t think computers will be the next civil engineering.
As for whether you joined the national army in 1949 or not, I think the host can take a long-term view, that is, what career or what do you want to do in your life. This is equivalent to a memoir, for your reference.
When I finished the college entrance examination in 2012, I was still struggling to choose a major. I remember that the best major in that year was finance, followed by architecture, civil engineering, and doctors. Biology and chemistry are more important.
But these scores are still higher or almost higher than those of computers. My dad said let me think for myself, and I can learn anything.
My dad thinks that doing civil engineering is also good, but my college entrance examination is so bad that I can’t apply for the best civil engineering majors in China.
What can an 18-year-old ignorant boy think about his choice of major? At that time, I could fill in 5 majors. The first few I filled in were popular majors such as financial management, and the last one I filled in was computer.
Why fill in the computer, because I like playing games, I think those who study computers should be able to make games, and I like it too. In the end, finance was so popular, so the previous ones were not recorded and transferred to the computer.
1. The golden decade of China’s Internet
From 2011 and 2012 to the last two years, I would like to call it the golden decade of China’s Internet.
If you enter the society just at the beginning of this golden decade, you may not even realize that some of the excitement and madness are only short-lived.
When I was an undergraduate, did you think everyone was thinking about where to work? No, many of our classmates are thinking about how to start a business. Those who have technical pursuits are thinking about how to build wheels, or go abroad to study for a doctorate and do academic work.
From freshman year, VCs will come to the school to persuade people to start a business. At that time, Didi and Kuaidi had not yet merged, Meituan did not have takeaways, Zhihu had a very popular answer with more than 100 likes, and short videos and live broadcasts did not even have the basic network speed.
You can make a prototype of an app, even if you don’t know how to make money later, you can get investment. So some students really went out to start a business with the seed round.
There is even a professional teacher’s original words: “You who are engaged in computers, when you are young, you want to earn millions and tens of millions in a few years, and earn all the money in this life.” It can be seen how impetuous the atmosphere was at that time.
Is it hard to find a job? Can you imagine that there is a company that gives full-time sophomores? Some students don’t take classes, go out to work, and only come to take exams and hand in homework.
I’m kind of a scumbag because I messed around with shit all the time in college and got an average of less than 80. Fortunately, I play a lot of games and are good (multiple games are in the top 10 in the region), and the interview reversal list is stuttering, and I still entered a certain game manufacturer after graduation.
Those of us who only talked about employment when we graduated from undergraduates had the best jobs to go to Google, Microsoft, WeChat headquarters, Ali’s core e-commerce business, to work as product managers at Tencent, or to well-known PEs and VCs.
right! You are not mistaken, the Internet is full of hot money, and those who engage in investment also need to recruit people who understand some technology. What to do if you are not good at technology, switch to product manager, or game planner, not to mention operation and maintenance testing.
Anyway, you can find a job in the end. At that time, the lowest salary was to go to the headquarters of the four major banks to do development, but they usually worked from 9 to 5, and they had a staff.
After graduating, I worked in a game company for 1-2 years. I felt that what I did was reskin games, which was too far from my ideal game development, so I went to the United States to continue my studies.
At that time, after working for one year, a headhunter would call you and ask you to change jobs. This may have been a bad decision in my life. After going abroad, I found that it became more and more difficult to find a job, both in China and the United States, and the interview became more and more difficult.
In the first year, everyone may generally take a medium-difficulty test. Good guy, in the second year, you may directly change to a hard test. It was hard to find a job, but when the epidemic came, the offer was cancelled.
Originally, the domestic company also interviewed and gave the offer, but after looking at the salary, it was not much more than the salary mentioned by the previous headhunter. If you return to China with a co-author, two years of master’s degree is equivalent to a white study. So dissatisfied, transferred to Ph.D. to continue reading.
Even after getting a doctorate, it is still difficult to find a job, because there are fewer positions suitable for a doctorate. In the interview, you need to ask about machine learning, talk about the thesis, ask about the previous internship experience, and finally have to take the leetcode hard test. Please, I just interview for an internship, please. You must know that 8-6 years ago, there were only easy interviews, and there were many people who switched to majors and wrote 50 questions to enter major American factories.
I also know a doctor who is much older than me. He said that around 10 years ago, if you went to the Amazon booth at the school recruitment fair and handed in your resume, you could get an offer on the spot. It seems that the United States also has a very crazy era of the job market.
In the final analysis, it is still because the dividends of the mobile Internet have disappeared. There is not so much business expansion, and there will be no annual expansion of enrollment. Wages are still high, but the barriers to entry are getting higher. There is a tendency towards gradual elitism.
It’s not surprising. A few years ago, it was said that China’s Internet has entered the second half. For us migrant workers, it means that it has become more voluptuous.
2. Talk about civil engineering
Next, let’s talk about civil engineering. My dad was working in the late 1980s, and he was assigned to a railway bureau after graduating from university. At that time, civil engineering was not the most popular.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the hottest thing was going into business. At that time, many people came out of the system to do business.
My dad was timid at the time. My grandparents were farmers, and my family had no capital or connections. On the other hand, the work of the railway system is also a sweet pastry. Seeing a doctor in railway hospitals, schools in railway primary schools, and eating in the canteen of the company basically costs nothing.
My dad said that he was hungry and scared when he was a child. He felt that many houses and roads and bridges would be built in China in the next few decades of reform and opening up, so he studied civil engineering to ensure that he could eat for a long time in the future.
He was right. From the early 1990s to the 2020s, China has been overhauling infrastructure and housing. It was not until recently that real estate houses were not sold well, and high-speed rail and expressways were repaired enough. But my dad didn’t work for 30 years. He retired in his 40s and took a second job in the unit.
The hottest era of civil engineering in China should be around 2000 to 2015, especially the 4 trillion yuan in 2008. At that time, many contractors and bosses in the building materials industry were really picking up money on the ground. But the entire golden age is about 10 years old.
Still take my dad as an example. When I was in primary school, my dad disliked the lack of money for the railway system and jumped to a construction company in Shanghai to manage the project. Three years later, he actually bought a house in Shanghai with full payment.
In terms of the speed of buying a house, civil engineering may have made more money than the Internet now. Then I worked for a few more years and bought two houses and a shop in a second-tier city. My dad quit his job.
Because he doesn’t like civil engineering at all, he likes stock trading and growing vegetables. As a result, I haven’t made much money after trading in stocks for so many years. On the contrary, the civil engineering market is not good, and the company he is affiliated with will not be affiliated with him, but he is not yet old enough to receive a pension, so he still needs to find a company to pay social security.
So he started looking for a job again, probably because he was too free. But no company wants him at all. Now that young people can’t find a job, who would want an old man who is almost 60?
But the civil engineering job market also had crazy years. My dad’s original words were around 2010, “Any cat or dog can come to work.” As long as you study civil engineering, you can be a specialist.
Now that the civil engineering is cold, simply put, the domestic construction is almost done. There is also a wave of infrastructure construction in the United States, but after that wave, so many people are no longer needed, and now American civil engineers are not considered a high-income group.
So I have seen the golden age of the two industries. The development and changes of modern society are extremely fast. If an industry can make money, it can quickly involve within 3 years. 10 years may pass as a whole cycle.
3. What about computers?
So you ask if you want to switch to a computer? I want to say do you like programming? Do you enjoy using your technology to solve problems? And not just for making money, because probably the best days are those few years, but you need to work for 40 years (at the statutory retirement age of 65).
Most people can’t see the future. When I said that I majored in computer science in 2012, many elders also said that your salary is about the same as the salary from the training class.
Who would have known that it took only a few months for WeChat to become a national app in 2012, and everyone entered the era of mobile Internet in an instant? Who knows that the tide will pass in a few years?
So at this point in time, I think computers are only for people who like them.
I think computers are still very easy to find employment, but it was too easy to find a job a few years ago. Change majors, learn java/python for two days and find a high-paying job without any actual project experience.
How could the world have always been this good? But if you have a serious degree in computer science, have done some serious projects or have internships during school, it should not be difficult to find a job. The premise is not to go to the algorithm positions of the top manufacturers.
As for layoffs, don’t worry, if you really have skills, it is absolutely impossible for layoffs to happen to you.
I used to make games, a group of more than a dozen people. A main program, an engine programmer (looking over 40 years old, with half-white hair), leading us newcomers who have just graduated for 1-2 years to do development.
The whole group always finds them when they have problems. I believe that even if layoffs, the two of them will not be laid off. Even if the company goes out of business, the headhunter will call the next day.
The tailor will be someone who only writes simple business logic, can neither do architecture, nor has enough technical depth in a certain area. Because the substitutability is too high.
In fact, even in the United States, FB will be laid off if it cannot be promoted to a senior engineer within a few years. Amazon seems to fire the bottom 6% of performance every year, and some companies can even reach 10%. 9 offers, 12 companies, 35 interviews, the job search for fresh computer graduates
Why do these companies dare to do this? Because these people are so replaceable, recruiting graduates for training will do the same job as them.
4. Computer is still one of the best majors
But learning computers and being a software engineer is still one of the best jobs in the next few decades.
Although the last golden age has passed, the silver age is also fragrant. Maybe the next round of technological revolution comes (metaverse, general AI, brain-computer interface, bioinformatics, etc., too many, all of which can generate new dividends) and everyone has entered the golden age again.
At this time, the price/performance ratio of volume cs is still relatively high. Those who can compare with CS in salary are basically investment banks, pharmaceutical companies, semiconductors, lawyers, and doctors may all be a little worse.
Which of the pharmaceutical factory lawyers and doctors do not want to graduate with a Ph.D.? It is more difficult to enter the American law school and medical school than other majors, and the Chinese medical and legal college entrance examination scores are not low. The overall income of the semiconductor industry is still a little less than that of software engineers. And it’s also very difficult for others. To do experiments, you have to carry an oscilloscope that weighs dozens of kilograms. It takes a whole day to solder the board, and you have to program and fix bugs.
As for investment banking, it must be a graduate from a prestigious school, various social activities, multiple internships during the undergraduate period, or a family relationship that is not short of money, and even handsome or beautiful as far as I can see.
As for cs, you only need to roll out an undergraduate/master’s degree and interview questions. Get more early in your career.
Doctors and lawyers will be more powerful in the later stages of college, but the same is true for computers. It is no problem to take the technical route not to mention 60 years old, but 45+ years old. The chief engineer and senior scientist earn no worse than the chief physician.
Furthermore, after working for many years, a large part of the income is investment income. These individual differences are larger than industry differences.
Finally, let’s talk about civil engineering. Why is civil engineering not good? It costs hundreds of thousands a year to go to Africa. In addition to fighting for career (money), isn’t it more important for people to fight for ideals?
Written at the end
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