Hello friends,
I recall reading one of MMM's posts on his blog that stated that most of his audience was comprised of engineers, so hopefully the following questions are appropriate for this forum.
Here is quick bio of me and my career:
-Working in Greater Seattle area
-24 years old
-1.5 years into electrical engineering career
-Salary: ~$70k
Lately I have contemplated pursuing a second degree in Computer Science in order to work within the software industry in Seattle. Here are the reasons why: I have more interest in software than I do in EE, there seems to be MUCH more employment opportunity for software development engineers/programmers in Seattle, and all of my CS friends with the same amount of work experience as me seem to earn a significantly higher salary than I do (20%+ more). There are already a lot of juggernaut software companies in Seattle and there seem to be more companies opening offices here (Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Tableau, Zillow, etc.).
Does anyone have anymore info on the computer science employment outlook?
How costly is a career change in terms of time and money? I do not think I would qualify for financial aid because of my salary, so I am assuming I would have to pay out of pocket for another degree? I think the best case scenario would be loans. Would the ROI (time and money) be worth it? I will probably be around 27 when I finish the CSE degree.
I am not sure if I can handle working full time and pursue a CSE degree full time since I am assuming that a CSE degree is just as hard, if not harder, than an EE degree.
I do not have much programming knowledge other than a bit of OOP(C++, Java, etc.) and low-level programming that I learned from my BSEE degree. At a local university, they are offering a Graduate certificate in Software design and development, which will take one year. Would I be able to get a job with just this or would I need to pursue the entire degree to get employed at a big software company?
Would it be a wise decision for me to pursue this career change?
Thank you very much