MAKE or BREAK? Does Your Major Matter For Software Engineering?

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What's up, folks? Headed to CrossFit. Nice and early. Um, I say nice and early. Nothing about it nice. Um, but we got a question submitted by Gaiman Yun in the comments. And this one, there's a bit of a trend right now in some of the questions for uh academics, school, and stuff like that. uh was talking about GPA in one of the recent videos and that's all thanks to a resume submission on dev leader. So this question from game and Yun is about uh the major that you have if you're going for post-secary education right so if you were to go to college or university and take computer science versus uh something else so computer science software engineering computer engineering or a completely different major altogether like what does that look like I'm kind of uh generalizing the question because I'm going to talk about it this way um so really like if you're going for postsecary education.

How much does the actual major uh sort of impact things that follow? Um, so I'll talk about this on the way to CrossFit. If you have questions that you want answered, please leave below in the comments. I'm happy to try and make a video response about it. Otherwise, you can send a message into Dev Leader on I think basically any social media platform you can imagine. Uh if you look for dev leader on some platform and I'm not there, let me know so I can start posting there. And uh otherwise, you can look for Nick Cosantino on LinkedIn. Send me a message. And if you send in a message, I'll keep you anonymous. If you comment, it's obviously very public. So just keep that in mind. Um okay. So, um I guess another thing I'll call out is like you're going to hear my perspective and my opinion on this.

Um, but I will try to see if I can, you know, look at things from different angles. I try to make sure I'm doing that in all my videos. I feel like that's a a responsibility I should have as well as I think there's a lot of benefit in trying to look at things in different ways. So, um, okay, where to start on this? I guess let's talk about uh maybe some things that I feel like are not my perspective but things that I I think might be uh expectations of others. So when it comes to picking your major, I would say that uh you will find on on some some job descriptions they say like requires you know um the university or college uh college degree in some like in computer science or equivalent field or software engineer or equivalent um and some employers will list this as a requirement.

Now, I think I don't want to say that if you were to apply and don't have that that it's a guaranteed no, but I do think that you're not sort of you're not setting yourself up for success compared to someone else that might have it. And I'm saying this not because I think that it means uh you are you're worse than someone else because you didn't go for computer science. I'm saying this because the employer literally has it in their job description. Right? If this is what they're saying is required, then I would I would basically expect that it is required, right? Good or good or bad, I'm just saying expect that it is required. Um, but at the same time, especially given how competitive things are right now, I would say that if you have the experience, um, and you happen to be in a different you, you you know, you went to university or college for something else completely, I would say just apply anyway.

Like, why not? Um, I just wouldn't be I wouldn't be surprised if you ended up getting a response that was like, "Hey, no." Um, I just think that if you're trying to maximize your chances, like why the hell not? Um, but my my point here is that some employers will list it as a requirement. Okay? So, as much as I'm going to talk about other angles of this, this is just literally a thing that exists. So um like I said I need to be able to talk about other perspectives when it comes to um you know what's equivalent like I mean open for debate I suppose but uh I would say probably software engineering, computer engineering, computer science there's there's going to be flavors of this.

Um the other kind of tricky thing is like in let's say in the US right college and university are I hear them talked about synonymously um in Canada just as an example these are my only two personal points of reference right cuz I am from Canada that's where I went to school and grew up we live in the US now um in Canada college and university are both post-secary education But um college you get a diploma and university you get a degree. Now is that to say one's better than the other? Nope. Not. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that they are they are different. Um, college is generally perceived as more hands-on or practical, more more application of the things that you're learning. And university is generally um, you know, kind of themed as more theoretical or abstract. Um, I'm making sweeping generalizations here.

So, if you feel like you want to attack me in the comments or something because you have a different perspective, that's nice. Um, go ahead. But that's my my generalization. Uh, again, I'm not saying good or bad. I'm just saying that you if you're trying to do this comparison, it starts to get a little bit more into gray area because these things are not the same thing uh as soon as you start talking about different countries or different types of school and all that. So anyway, enough on that. Um my personal opinion is that like I found when I was in university, I went for computer engineering at the University of Wateroo. Um I feel like a lot of and I've talked about this a little bit in other videos.

A lot of the topics and subjects that I learned or I should say that I was taught in in university, I feel like an overwhelming majority of what was covered does not feel relevant to what I do or have done in the, you know, almost 13 years since I graduated. Um, and that's just my my take on it. Now then someone would say well well that seems like a huge waste of time and money and I would sit here and tell you I would do it again personally. I might pick software engineering instead of computer engineering but I would do it again personally. Um because for me it was less about the specific topics and you know going through university I was like this is dumb, this is dumb. I had six internships which is really what saved it for me.

But when I did the reflection on this in a previous video, I was saying that I feel like there were some like meta principles that university taught me like the experience of going to university taught me. So I learned a lot about how I learn which sounds very funny but uh I learned you know different ways of like studying and trying to learn material that does not work for me and other ways that do. I learned uh a lot about analysis. So the fact that as a software engineer by the way I always say that engineering is like really rooted in doing pros and cons analysis and discussing trade-offs right like that that is where the engineering kicks in um versus just like can you make something work so I feel that like university for me really allowed me to to get a handle on doing analysis pros and cons and being able to communicate that.

Does that have anything to do with computer science? Like absolutely not. Does that have anything to do specifically with like topics in software engineering? No. So my personal take aside from like employers that might say like we expect that you have you know some degree or some equivalent degree. Um my personal take is like depending on how you learn depending on how you learn um you may find different benefits for going for different subjects and stuff. So um like I said for me the the actual material in the courses did not matter. So, I don't know if I would have picked a different um degree. Like I I Okay, I wouldn't necessarily have had the internships. That would have been a huge loss for me cuz I I had six internships, like two full years of work experience. I I wouldn't trade that for anything from a postsecary education perspective.

If we park that, I don't know if learning um I don't know if going for another topic or another subject, another major would have uh would have allowed me to practice doing analysis and pros and cons as much. So maybe that wouldn't have been a good fit to pick something else for me. But you know in terms of like learning specific software engineering things I feel like that was all selftaught for me. I was I was always building stuff before university during university I was always building my own projects and after. So I'm saying this because you know if you if you have a personal interest in going to learn about different topics and stuff like and you're motivated by that like that might be a good reason to go for different post-secary education. I certainly didn't I I'm kind of repeating myself now. My post-secary education specifically for you know computer science topics, software engineering, computer engineering topics, it felt it felt dated to me.

It felt uninteresting. It felt uh like not applicable, but meta principles definitely were valuable. I didn't realize that until like reflecting on it later though. Um, another sort of angle I wanted to talk about is like, and this is going to be anecdotally from speaking with other people. So, on my main YouTube channel, which is Dev Leader, um, I have a podcast playlist. You can watch it on uh, Spotify as well if you're interested, which is called the Dev Leader podcast. On that podcast, I interview software developers primarily. There's a couple people that aren't. And uh one of the things that I love talking to people about and we always spend the beginning of the interview discussing it is like what did it look like to get to where you are right now?

because I think that this is such a valuable perspective for people to share because I feel like a lot of people talk about this kind of stuff as in like there is a one expected path and if you're not on it like you're failing and I just I think that it's a huge misconception. Sorry, I got to move over lanes. um can't multitask. I feel like it's a huge misconception and um sometimes people they get like analysis paralysis like if I don't pick the best school and I don't pick the best major uh and I don't do like this perfectly then like my entire future is screwed. kind of feels like you're playing a video game, like a role playing game, and there's no respspec option, except it's your life and it costs real money and it costs real time. Right? If you're a role playing game fan like me, you're like, "Okay, I picked the wizard class, right?

Obviously, we're we're probably more like wizards versus like a I don't know, a warrior class. We're not uh most of us aren't the warrior type. I don't know, maybe I'm overgeneralizing in high fantasy, but you pick your class and then you say, "Okay, I'm going to speck into fire magic. I'm doing it." And then AI comes around and you're like, "It should have been lightning magic. What was I thinking? My career is ruined. I'll never I will never amount to anything." Right? there's no respspec option. Or maybe you picked you picked your warrior class in the beginning and now that you're you know you've been working for a few years after being a warrior, you want to respspec. You're like, I got to I'm going to be a sorcerer. I I decided I want to do it. I got to learn the magic. And then you have everyone telling you, well, no, you're a warrior.

You can't you can't do that. That would be dumb. you could never learn magic. And it's like, no, like it's real life. You get respects. It's cool. Um, that's the awesome part about learning is you can always just learn new So, um, on that podcast when I talk to people about how they got to where they are in their career. There are so many examples of people that were career switchers or started by doing something completely different. Um, I've given a shout out to him a couple of times. Uh, I I I always forget his name and you can hear me stuttering because I'm embarrassed trying to like remember his name and every time I talk about him I forget his name. Dan uh I can't say his last name. I can visualize it though. It's like Petrasu Baba I think. Um he's got a hyphenated relatively complex last name.

Goes by code wrinkles on YouTube and on social media. He's not posting as much anymore. Awesome guy. Um he's a career switcher. I can't recall what he was doing before, but he switched over to software development. I don't know, like in his in his 30s, I think. And then he's like a a pretty like in C and.net content creation. He's like relatively known. And like he goes around doing public speaking and stuff in software development. Like he's a real smart guy, successful software developer. Um, but like he's a he's a career switcher. I don't even know if he went I don't think he went back to school. I can't recall. I'd have to go rewatch the interview or ask him. But there's my point is that there's so many examples of people that were like I went for something else completely different. Um, John Vanir of Latterly IO has uh I think he did everything in econ.

So, he went through and got a PhD in economics. I don't know if he's like formally educated in software development. He very well might be. He's also a very smart guy. Um, so I might be speaking out of my ass right now. I don't know if he has like formal education in software development. Um, and if he does, maybe he went back for it or something or had a minor in it. I don't know. But point is like his his top level of education is not in software development at all and he's been very you know successful as a software developer. So, it's like the reason I'm sharing this is because while I started the video by saying some employers might have it as a requirement, you have plenty plenty of examples of people that simply just did not do that and have managed to be very successful in their careers.

Um, I'm trying to tell you this because it's like don't take it from me, take it from these other people. Um, I'm just trying to tell you about a few examples of that. So, if you're curious about more like that, just head over to my main YouTube channel, Dev Leader, look for the podcast, pick one. Um, you might end up on someone who did go to college, university, because there's examples of that, too. Get all of the flavors, but um, there's definitely some that are career switchers and went for a different college or university. So, just as a heads up. Anyway, I'm at CrossFit. I hope that helps. Thanks very much for the question game and Yune. I appreciate it's a it's a it's either the second or the third question. So, good job. Okay. Thanks, folks. We'll see you later. Take care.