shane hummus: is a software engineering degree worth it? salaries, job satisfaction & tech careers

Is a software engineering major or software engineering degree worth it? That's what we're gonna be talking about today. But before we get into that, make sure to gently tap the like button in order to defeat the evil YouTube algorithm. On this channel, we talk about personal finance, college degrees, careers, and opportunities that are gonna lead you to success. And we also go over how you can avoid some of the common financial traps that so many people end up falling for. Now, if that sounds like something that interests you and you haven't done it already, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and ring the notification bell so that you never miss out. Now, with that being said, we are gonna jump right into it. And the first question is, what the heck is software engineering? Software engineering is gonna focus on programming languages, computer networking, software design, as well as coding. However, you're probably gonna get a well-rounded education when it comes to technology in general. Now, some of my subscribers informed me that there's pretty much no difference between computer science and software engineering in certain countries. However, from my research here in the United States, the main difference is computer science focuses on the more theoretical and mathematical aspect of computers. Of course, you're also going to learn how to code as well because that's one of the most useful parts of computer science. However, software engineering is gonna focus more on the software development itself. And that's gonna include the design, the testing, the maintenance, and the rollout, et cetera, everything that has to do with software development. Now, there are a ton of different career paths you can go down with this one. A lot of them are gonna overlap with computer science. Information security analyst, computer programmer, network architect, et cetera. There's tons of different career paths. Now, this is a relatively rare degree here in the United States. Only around 1,300 people graduate per year. However, again, I've been told by my subscribers that it's much more common in other countries just because of the fact that computer science and software engineering are basically the same thing in some countries. So, you guys are gonna have to look that up for yourselves. Now, we're gonna evaluate this degree and whether it's worth it in four different really important categories. And the first section we're gonna talk about is going to be earning potential or salary. So, with this degree, you can expect to make around $71,000 a year starting out and $114,000 in mid-career pay. You can compare that to a really high-paying degree like petroleum engineering or a really low-paying one like recreational therapy. And when you do that, you're gonna see it's definitely on the higher-paying side of things. Now, one career path you might go down, like I mentioned before, is computer network architect. And they make around $112,000 a year. You could also become a software developer and they make around $107,000. Or you could become an information security analyst, which makes around $99,000. And there's honestly a ton of different technology-related careers that you can go into with this one. And pretty much all of them are gonna get you to that six-figure level. So, a lot of the careers are gonna be very high-paying. Now, when you look at how much you make with a degree like this throughout an entire lifetime, you're gonna see that it's well above the average of $2.4 million. People who graduate with an engineering degree in general make around $3.5 million throughout an entire lifetime. And then the ones that go into a career that has to do with computer or mathematics make around $3.7 million, so even more. And the technology industry in general tends to just pay their employees pretty well. I have a friend, for instance, who works for a Fortune 50 company that's a technology company. And he has an associate's in, I believe, it's business administration. And he gets paid really, really well. He is a manager, so he works pretty hard, but he gets compensated extremely well. And that's without having any tech-related skills. But technically, with a degree like this, you could work in just about any industry because they're pretty much all getting disrupted by technology. So, there are a lot of options, and pretty much all of them are going to be high-paying. This one is super easy. It's gonna score a 10 out of 10 when it comes to salary or earning potential. Next on the list, we're gonna be talking about satisfaction. And this is basically gonna be comprised of job satisfaction and meaning. Now, meaning is basically just how much you think your job positively impacts the world, whereas job satisfaction is how much do you enjoy doing your job on a day-to-day basis. So, when it comes to meaning, we see that PayScale shows software engineering degree graduates have a 42% of them think that their job significantly, positively impacts the world. So, if you look at a really good one, like radiation therapy, most of the health-related degrees have very high meaning scores, or plastics engineering technology at 31%, you see that it is definitely on the lower side. So, that's pretty interesting to think about. I mean, I guess some of those developers at Facebook that are paid to design ways to get you addicted to social media don't think that their job is positively impacting the world. Go figure. Now, if we stay on PayScale and we look at job satisfaction for specific careers, like computer software engineer, for instance, you'll see it's around 57%, which, again, is kind of on the average or even lower side. However, the thing about getting a degree like this is there are a ton of different jobs that you can work in. So, if you don't like being a software developer, you can easily switch careers. The downside to having skills that are really high in demand is the fact that there's not that many people out there that have those skills, and so, therefore, the company is gonna expect a lot out of you. However, if you look at a lot of these technology companies, they treat their employees ridiculously well. Like I mentioned before, my friend who works for a Fortune 50 company, he has so many perks and benefits. It's ridiculous. It's like almost every time I hang out with him, he'll tell me a new cool thing that his job is doing for him. At Google, they have restaurants onsite that you can get free food at. You get paid to work out. There's lots of different activities that you can do in the middle of the day. They bring in people who are the world's foremost experts, and you get to listen to them and pick their brain on just about any topic out there. You have onsite doctors as well as pharmacies. I mean, just the list goes on and on, and a lot of the time, especially when it comes to job satisfaction, it's not so much the job that you're doing. Sometimes it has a lot more to do with the company that you're working for or the industry that you're in. If you're in an industry that's struggling, it really doesn't matter all that much if you work hard because there's just not that much money to go around, whereas if you're in a booming industry, there's gonna be tons of opportunity for you. If you're very ambitious, you can go for those high positions, or if you're not, you can probably just have a relatively chill life and still make a good amount of money. Engineering is the third least regretted type of major. Only around 15% of the people who get engineering degrees regret it, and the reason is because the best jobs require advanced degrees. Now, this one kind of falls somewhere in between engineering and computer science, and of course, computer science is the least regretted major of all. However, I will say here that satisfaction is extremely subjective. So for one person, working as a software developer might be amazing, and for another person, it might be awful. With that being said, overall, I'm gonna have to give this one a score of 8.5 out of 10. Next on the list, we're gonna be talking about demand, and when it comes to demand, just about nothing out there is gonna be able to beat technology-related degrees. When it comes to types of occupations, computer and information technology type careers are growing at 11% over the next 10 years, which is the highest out of all different types of careers, except for health. So for instance, computer network architect is growing around 5% over the next 10 years, which is faster than average. Software developer is gonna be growing around 22%, and that's with 1.5 million jobs already. So that means over the next 10 years, there's gonna be 316,000 new jobs created. And if you look at information security analyst, it's growing at 31%, an absolutely ridiculous rate, and that means there's gonna be 40,000 new jobs created. Now, one test that I like to do is to search the degree name on monster.com or indeed.com. So when you type in software engineering degree on monster.com, you're gonna see that 103,000 job postings have that as a keyword in the description. Just to compare that to a degree that has a ton of demand, like computer science is 141,000, and one that has almost no demand, anthropology is 829. And keep in mind with software engineering, there's only around 1,000 graduates every year. So you're having 1,000 people graduate, but there's 100,000 job openings that would like to hire people with software engineering degrees. Those are pretty good numbers. So for that, I'm gonna give this one a score of 9.5 out of 10. Next, we're gonna be talking about X factors, and this is basically anything that we didn't talk about before. So I like to focus on skills, for instance, flexibility, how easily outsourced or automated these types of skills are gonna be. Now, when it comes to engineering degrees, like I mentioned, you make a ton of money over a lifetime, but it's not just if you go into engineering. It pretty much doesn't matter what career path you go into. You're gonna make either average or above average most likely. So for instance, engineers that go into an arts and media related career are gonna make $3 million over a lifetime. So engineering is an extremely flexible degree, and even if you don't end up becoming an engineer, chances are you're going to be very successful no matter what career path or just path in general that you go down. Now, when it comes to the skills that you learn, when you look at software engineering, it's actually the number one skill on ZipRecruiter's skill index at 88 out of 100 score. The number two skill is basic life support at around 87 out of 100. And just to put that in perspective, one of the worst ones on the list is industrial sewing, which is eight out of 100. Now, I always like to say this, keep in mind, when it comes to how much a skill is valued, that doesn't necessarily mean that some sort of skill doesn't have any inherent value. What it means is businesses, owners and hiring managers don't tend to hire people with certain skills at this particular time in history for whatever reason. So for instance, industrial sewing might've been the hottest skill out there like 100 years ago, but right now it's one of the worst. But with that being said, software engineering is the number one skill you can learn. And I talk about this a lot on the channel. If you can go into technology-related skills and specifically software development, software engineering, that is a huge opportunity right now. I knew that this was true even before I started this channel but in researching everything on this channel, it's become more and more obvious how much of a huge opportunity it is. And it's so good that even I am learning how to code myself. Now, this whole situation that's happened in the world this last year has kind of stopped my efforts a little bit. Let's just put it that way. I had something really big planned for December and it didn't happen and it had something to do with coding but that is gonna happen in the future. So stay tuned for that. Now, when it comes to the likelihood of automation, these types of careers are pretty much never going to be automated. Or if they are, they'll be one of the last ones that that happens to. So for instance, Will Robots Take My Job shows that software developer has about a 13% chance of being automated. And most of the technology-related careers that you would go into also have very low chances. Now, one other thing that I like to mention is a lot of the time people will get engineering degrees and then they end up becoming entrepreneurs. They end up starting their own businesses. And if you're able to start a successful business, which is really tough, but if you're able to do it, you can make a lot more than just about any employee out there. And that's probably why engineering comes in as number one on the careers that create the most millionaires. Now, on top of that, computer science, which software engineering is kind of in between those two, comes in at number eight and it's the one that's rising the fastest. So maybe five years from now, it'll be number five. And that just shows that not only do you have a lot of career opportunities, but because of the fact that you work in the technology industry, there's a good chance that you're gonna spot some kind of opportunity down the line and then you're gonna quit your job, start your own business, and there's probably a better chance of being successful in tech than there is in a lot of different industries out there. So overall, when it comes to X-Factors, this one also scores really well. I'm gonna have to give it a nine out of 10. So the pros here, I mean, there's a lot to say. Really good salary, very flexible. There's plenty of job opportunities out there. These skills are extremely high in demand. The cons here, there's gonna be a high competition to stay on top. So yes, these skills are in demand. Not that many people have them, but the companies are gonna expect a lot out of you. And because of that, the workload factor can be exhausting. You're gonna be solving very challenging problems and so you're gonna kind of have to use the mathematical side of things as well as the creative side of things, which can be tough. I know for me, whenever I'm doing creative work, it's almost like I have creative juice and then once that juice is out, maybe three or four hours into the day, I pretty much can't be creative anymore. So it's almost like a battery. And once that battery goes to zero, it's like I'm not gonna be able to be creative until the next day. Now, on top of that, there's pretty much never-ending learning as software evolves. And again, this could be a pro or a con, I guess. Now, one of the big problems with working in technology, and I have talked about this a lot on my channel, is ageism. So companies will hire someone right out of college, 22 years old, maybe they work 10 or 15 years, and then they'll kind of start to phase them out in a lot of cases. And the reason for that is, just putting it really bluntly, young people tend to learn things a lot faster. And as coding evolves, there's different languages, different frameworks that have to be learned, young people can learn that faster, generally speaking. Now, there are ways to get around this, and I've talked about this before. Usually what people do is they either specialize in something, so they become like a world-renowned expert in either one language or one framework, something along those lines. Or what they do is they move into more of a management role. But overall, I'm gonna give this one a score of 9.25 out of 10. This is definitely one of the best degrees out there. Now, of course, this is gonna be different from person to person. Like I said, this is extremely subjective. For one person, this might be the perfect degree, 10 out of 10, 11 out of 10. For another person, it might be negative 10 out of 10. So always make sure to do your research, do your due diligence, never go for a degree just because it makes a lot of money. There's a lot of other factors in there that you need to consider. I do focus on the money side of things on this channel because this is a personal finance channel, but it's important for you to make sure that you're also happy with your career as well. With that being said, if you want help researching different degrees and you don't wanna wait for the videos to come out because eventually I will get to all of them, it's just gonna take some time, you can check out my college degree ranker down in the description below on my Patreon. Been working really hard on it. Right now it's in version 1.1, and as soon as things kind of settle down in the world, I'm gonna create version 1.2, which will be even better. But as of now, I can confidently say that it is the best resource in the entire world on doing research for college degrees. If you haven't done it already, go ahead and gently tap the like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell, comment down below, any thoughts, comments, criticisms. Share this video, that actually helps quite a bit if you share it with your friends. And before you leave, check out my other videos right here. I made them just for you.