I myself have Bachelors and Masters in Computer Science degree with 11+ years of full-time industry experience (Canada) and here is my opinion about popularity of computer science degree:
- What is the point of getting a Computer Science degree when the people sitting besides you are also Tech Team Leads or Sr. Developers or Architects without a computer science degree?
- Why bother spending so many years going through theoretical computer science courses when you could have gotten through some bootcamps, youtube vids, Leetcode, and spent time creating github portfolio? Ultimately its the frameworks (and sometimes certs.) which gets you the money. There is a reason why even Google dropped the 'degree' requirements for their Software Engineering positions.
- When it comes to corporate IT: Among the most glorified of CS/IT career is that of a Software Developer (coding). And if I was to be biased, I would say those who didn't get CS degree and instead went to Community College for programming diplomas tend to better at picking up frameworks and churning out code. It seems that their minds are less cluttered with useless technical details which nobody in Corporate IT cares about.
- Frankly speaking, Programming and even other CS fields (including niche ones such as Data Science / AI / Machine Learning) suffer from absence of licensing requirements. I am not advocating for one but from what I have seen, just about any office job outside of IT has set of licensing requirements (PEng, LLB, CFA, CPA, Securities course, etc.) and atleast in Canada, they want the "Canadian version" of CPA, CFA, etc. -- this ensures that new immigrants can't just walk into such Canadian jobs and safeguards them against offshoring to an extent.
Despite all this, I am still glad that I have my CS degrees because that is just me, it's fits my thought process and personality. I really didn't do it for the money. I just feel I couldn't have done any other degree besides a CS degree - it's not about harder or easier.
- What is the point of getting a Computer Science degree when the people sitting besides you are also Tech Team Leads or Sr. Developers or Architects without a computer science degree?
- Why bother spending so many years going through theoretical computer science courses when you could have gotten through some bootcamps, youtube vids, Leetcode, and spent time creating github portfolio? Ultimately its the frameworks (and sometimes certs.) which gets you the money. There is a reason why even Google dropped the 'degree' requirements for their Software Engineering positions.
- When it comes to corporate IT: Among the most glorified of CS/IT career is that of a Software Developer (coding). And if I was to be biased, I would say those who didn't get CS degree and instead went to Community College for programming diplomas tend to better at picking up frameworks and churning out code. It seems that their minds are less cluttered with useless technical details which nobody in Corporate IT cares about.
- Frankly speaking, Programming and even other CS fields (including niche ones such as Data Science / AI / Machine Learning) suffer from absence of licensing requirements. I am not advocating for one but from what I have seen, just about any office job outside of IT has set of licensing requirements (PEng, LLB, CFA, CPA, Securities course, etc.) and atleast in Canada, they want the "Canadian version" of CPA, CFA, etc. -- this ensures that new immigrants can't just walk into such Canadian jobs and safeguards them against offshoring to an extent.
Despite all this, I am still glad that I have my CS degrees because that is just me, it's fits my thought process and personality. I really didn't do it for the money. I just feel I couldn't have done any other degree besides a CS degree - it's not about harder or easier.