'Get a different degree': Reddit's brutal advice to a CS student worried about the job market
male employee using his computer at work
A post on Reddit’s r/SoftwareEngineerJobs from a student about to start a computer science degree, asking what to learn over the next three years to land a software engineering job, has drawn responses that range from genuinely useful to deeply discouraging.
The original poster is already learning C on their own before university even starts, which shows that they are genuinely motivated to learn. The thread they walked into, however, shows the anxiety and uncertainty that have taken hold across the software engineering community.
“What’s happening now is unprecedented”
One of the more measured responses came from someone who has been in the field for several years, and they themselves admitted they don’t have a clean answer either.
“At this point, no one knows. I’ve been in this field for a few years, and what is happening now is unprecedented. Every other day, there is some new process, prompt, skill, agent, harness, loop, graph. Best advice is you need to discipline yourself not to use AI in order to develop your problem-solving and critical thinking skills, [because] that would absolutely put you above the rest.”
It’s a counterintuitive point in an era of AI-assisted everything: the students who resist the shortcut and build genuine problem-solving ability may end up better positioned than those who lean on tools that may change or disappear entirely before they graduate. It’s about learning the theories that would serve as a solid foundation, helping them troubleshoot problems that may arise down the line.
The basics still matter
Another commenter zeroed in on something that gets overlooked in conversations about frameworks and languages: “Learn the basics. Current students aren’t doing the work and can’t pass interviews because they blindly prompt.”
The observation tracks with what hiring managers at companies of all sizes have been saying: that a new wave of CS graduates can produce code using AI tools but struggle to explain what it does, debug it when it breaks, or adapt it to novel problems. The fundamentals are the differentiator, not the tools. This is also related to the first comment, highlighting that skills remain a differentiating factor between hundreds of applicants.
A blunt warning about the field
Not everyone in the thread was focused on how to succeed in software engineering. Some questioned whether the field was worth entering at all. “Get a different degree, man. I’ve had my degree for a year and haven’t been able to land a software job yet,” one Redditor wrote.
Another was equally direct: “I wouldn't go into CS. Pivot to finance.”
A third offered a summary of the current tech landscape: “Honestly, I have no clue. It changed so much in so little time; it’s difficult to predict what will happen. And just so you know, many new graduates can’t find SWE (software engineering) jobs, even those with a master’s degree. The job market really is that competitive these days.”
An unexpected but fair piece of advice
One comment stood out for going in a completely different direction and for being arguably the most immediately actionable.
“Learn to communicate better. Sorry to be harsh, but good English is extremely important in the modern business world. You don’t give a good impression by writing blocks of text with no punctuation or capital letters.”
It’s a blunt observation, but not an unfair one. In a market where hundreds of qualified candidates are competing for the same roles, the ability to communicate clearly in writing, in interviews, and in code documentation is a differentiator that technical skills alone cannot replace.
What this thread actually tells us
The original poster asked a practical question: what should I learn over the next three years? The thread’s honest answer is that nobody quite knows. And that’s not a deflection, but it’s the truth.
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Three years ago, the advice would have been clear: master your data structures and algorithms, get internships, learn a popular language. Today, the landscape is shifting fast enough that specific technical recommendations made now may be outdated before the original poster even graduates.
What does hold up across the responses is a cluster of more durable advice: build genuine problem-solving skills rather than relying on AI shortcuts, get the fundamentals right, communicate well, and go into the next three years with eyes open about how competitive the market has become, even for people who have already graduated.
For CS students in Singapore and across Southeast Asia facing similar uncertainty about where software engineering is headed, the Reddit thread is a useful reality check; it’s not a reason to give up, but it provides a reason to think carefully about what actually creates value in a market that has changed more in the last two years than in the decade before it.
Read also: Indian student asks if a US master’s is still worth it as Reddit users share hard truths
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