I decided if I go back to school it has to be for computer science or engineering, other wise its a waste of money.

I picked computer science and so far dont know if its for me. Seems like all you become is a code monkey doing repetitive math over and over again. No creativity, no strategizing, no coming up with ideas to move the company forward, youre just a nobody that gets paid alot.

I view engineering as more creative, scientific, and exciting, am I right about it?

In real world, development is all about design and problem solving. The actual coding is the easy part... With that being said, of course if you're working for a company you're going to be developing whatever the company needs which can be boring at times.

But it's a good field to get into and obtain a cushy work from home job while using your dev skills to start a side hustle.

What kind of engineering are you asking about? The field is so broad, could end up doing something that looks exactly like comp sci or something totally different. Technology these days ultimately requires code though. Even if you're developing physical hardware, it will require code to design, communicate, and function.

Actually there is little math involved when it comes to CS. It’s mostly just a consideration you have to keep in mind as opposed to fully utilizing on the job. The only exceptions to this are if you’re building a library from scratch using low level code or in data science/AI research. Which gets to the second point, the exploratory nature of CS is generally confined to the research and development teams filled with graduate degrees and Math minors/majors or even other Natural Science majors. Don’t be surprised if your work isn’t glorious as a software engineer, it isn’t supposed to be.

engineering school all teaches you how to be a design engineer

first classes will give you an existing configuration to solve - a circuit, a beam with weight on it, a connection of pipes ect and solve for all the voltages or forces/stressed, water flow ect

then when you know how to do that, the classes move on to design - given specifications design a circuit, beam, bridge, pipe system ect that can carry these loads ect


Then you go out looking for a job and you can either work as a design engineer for a company doing "real" engineering or you might end up doing project management and coordination type crap where people generally respect that you have an engineering degree but you never really work as an engineer or do any of what you were taught in school. It will help that you learned technical stuff back in school so you can relate better to whats going on in the projects.

A lot of jobs with engineer in the title that you never get to do real engineering and if you stay in them long enough you will forget a lot from school plus you wont be up to speed on all the CAM, CAD, FEM ect software used in the industry and you will be in the project management realm for the rest of your career, which is ok and you can make good money doing that. You just have to think about which direction you want to go with your first jobs after school.

Engineering's seldom about flying by the seat of your pants and just hacking chit together by yourself. Some small firms and startups work that way, but big firms never do.

Usually at the big corps, you become a specialist in one niche area of the process or technology, and then take ownership of all your group's problems related to that. For an example from my work: do you find the startup sequence of USB ports exciting? I wouldn't call itfun, but there's more depth to learn there you would think. Then when some new cell phone is in pre-production and the USB port's all glitchy, people all come to you for answers, and that's when you earn your paycheck.

The key at most places is to find a balance between being the local expert at what you do, and making sure you don't get pigeonholed into that one thing. Imagine being the group expert on floppy disk drives in 2005, having spent 10+ years on nothing but that... you're just absolutely ****ed. I've seen a lot of engineers who ask their manager to change to a different role on the team, or ask to move over to a new technology after 5-10 years, just to make sure their skills stay current. If you hit "repetitive code monkey" mode where you understand everything about your job and can't see anything else to add or improve, it's probably time to switch and learn something new.This. If you can't open up say a 1200 page document of USB port specs and go "hmmm, this part is cool", you're pry not cut out for engineering.

As a Civil Engineer that's switching to Computer Science, you've oversimplified the field and given a lot of credit to engineering.

I'll speak for Civil Engineering but I can tell you it's not as creative as you might think it is. You have to abide by codes/laws and a lot of budget restrictions which can make the process very dull. CS allows you to acquire a skill which is and will be in demand as well as something you can actually use to create something from scratch on your own time.

At the end of the day, a job is a job no matter what. You'll be doing boring things you don't like and some fun stuff you'll enjoy in both. You can also move on to management eventually and make the big boy decisions like you're saying you want to do, but you won't be doing that in either profession when you start out.

Some of my 200 level CS courses cross referenced as math courses. CS is somewhat of an applied mathematics. Most programs you end up with a math minor by default, because the criteria for CS require math classes that add up to you getting a minor. Basically there's a lot of math

Sounds like you want more of the business end of computers. Try looking into an IT degree, or something in the business school relating to computers.

worked as a civil engineer for a while. Most mind numbingly boring job I've ever had.

Comp sci negatives are also in Eng negatives

There is very little actual maths in most irl applications of CS, almost none in day to day software development so I'm not sure what you mean here.There is creativity and strategising in approaches to developing software features. If you are thinking strategic at a company level you need to be senior or something like a product manager.No. I worked in aerospace and mechanical engineering for 10 years and it was dull as fuk. Most of these fields are very mature and are about producing things that are very similar to things that have gone before. Unless you work at places like F1 teams a lot of science-y research-y work isn't done in industry: you spec something that exists, tweak something that is already designed or put a big safety factor on it. It can also take 5+ years for some of these projects to run and the focus is on doing it faster and cheaper.

Computer science is such a broad field of study, it can go either way. Sure, if you're writing some high level Java or python apps it could feel rote and cookie cutter.

On the other hand, you could be writing resource constrained, real-time embedded software written for a custom piece of hardware that runs in a multi-threaded environment partitioned for optimal cache hits dealing with time latency sensitive asynchronous events. Solving the challenges that arise within that kind of environment requires creativity and imagination blended with incisive logic and the ability to multi-task several problems in your head at once. The code is simply a hammer in the hand of the carpenter. What you can build with it requires a hell of a lot more.

I graduated in EE but ended up working in embedded software development. It can be incredibly satisfying from a creativity in problem solving point of view and these kinds of jobs tend to pay handsomely to go with it.

I don't know if it's just my area, but it seems like CS guys have trouble finding jobs while the EE/ME guys have zero trouble getting hired right after graduating.

Which specialties in computer science offer the most jobs?

This is a very good response.

That is the thing, not only is their project management vs actual design engineering but even the design engineering in the real world compared to school, the college classes dont really show all the mundane day to day chit. everything is a blank problem from scratch in school but IRL is a lot of regulations and chit, really just there to make sure things are safe and work not designing new things from scratch.

As an intern one project was relocating new roadside drainage pipes, most of it was meetings with all the ultility companies on how they going to move their chit that is affected, who pays for what, all that crap. in school it was all about calculating flow and the microeffects of some turn of pipe when that was all a minor or non issue IRL and the contracting chit was the main focus.

then at current job, a great deal of the engineers time is spent on reviewing previous decisions and seeing if they can accept out of spec conditions based on showing a history of doing it before, along with all the admin paper work of that.

I did management information systems for my undergrad in the business school. I now make more than most CS or engineering degree graduates at my age and have a job typically populated by them, doing advanced networking, coding, security, etc...

Pretending that only CS and engineering degrees are worth getting is very limiting. I find that it's mostly the problem solving and critical thinking skills that make money. Anyone can learn a formula or basic coding. It's when and how to use the formula or how to design the logic behind the code that makes money. Also people and business skills, the higher I get I find the biggest issues aren't always technical.