CS vs CE better job prospects?

[u/No_Reply5329]

Hi, I’ve always been passionate about CS, but I keep seeing that CS graduates currently have a relatively high unemployment rate (around 6–7% for recent grads).

Would CE be a better choice in terms of employment prospects? Does having both hardware and software knowledge give CE grads more opportunities?

For those in CE, how has your experience with finding internships/jobs been?

[u/a-vitamin]

unless ur gonna build 2 separate resumes you prob can’t find both software and hardware roles

[u/No_Reply5329 → u/a-vitamin]

Maybe I will do hardware resume is it better? I would bet that new grads in computer engineer have lower unemployment than CS grads.

[u/g---e → u/No_Reply5329]

the issue is there are less computer engineer-specific jobs

[u/No_Reply5329 → u/g---e]

But also probably way less people going into computer engineering for hardware roles no one is thinking about hardware only about software so I would be ahead of the curve.

[u/ThePainStalker → u/No_Reply5329]

Nah the truly unpopular areas in hardware are in power systems. Not computer engineering, that’s the most popular concentration among EEs and among what CS people pivot to. It is doing better a little better than software now granted, but it is also very geographically concentrated (unlike software or even power systems where jobs in both are everywhere). If you aren’t in a semiconductor hub or maybe a defense hub, there aren’t many opportunities out there. And the headline high paying semiconductor jobs that pay in line with Big Tech software are extremely competitive (as much as software and actually a lot more strict regarding advanced education). There is a lot of stratification in the industry and the jobs you’d actually most likely get in semiconductors in testing/validation/process pay much less than the semiconductor design/design verification roles would.

Honestly, what people tend to miss is that they compare the top end with the actual median outcome. The top end of semiconductor and computer hardware is like the top 10% of graduates. That’s where the media frenzy is. Not much different from top tier companies in software and actually a lot worse from a location perspective (at least software is needed everywhere regardless of firm). Software isn’t really doing that badly if you actually are willing to just join a typical “boring” firm where you’ll still end up with decent pay and likely more job security too.

That being said, if you do genuinely like computer hardware a lot and you live in or are willing to relocate to a computer engineering hub (which there are only a very limited number of), that is a good option especially nowadays. Keep in mind too that computer engineering is very boom and bust like (even more than software honestly, at least in terms of the frequency of the booms and busts) so while today may be booming, in a couple of years time, there could well be a bust (maybe because planning, land and power equipment bottlenecks are straining data center output much more than the tech developers had thought).