|
This is a sad failure of our social contracts, especially in societies like the US where universities are often a net-negative drain for graduates' financial well-being. For a period of time, certain majors could improve your odds of making it to the middle-class, and CS used to be one of those. We Millennials blamed the generations before us for leaving us such a shitty system, but it seems like we in turn have left you an even worse world to start in. I'm truly sorry =/ At least, for now, it's probably still better than not having a CS degree at all? At least you're closer to AI/ML than many other majors, and could pivot into that subfield if you wanted to... that's a pretty big advantage, since it positions you closer to the side of "AI creator" than the hordes of "AI users" (like myself, who never had the CS background and are 20 years too old to start). Don't get too discouraged. You're just starting out, and have the entire rest of your life to make meaningful contributions, whether to AI or anything else. Yes, it really sucks that you are starting out at the bottom of a cycle, where there are no jobs in everyday CS left for juniors. But that's the thing about cycles... once you hit rock-bottom, the only way to go is up... hopefully. It might mean you have to work in other fields for a while while rapidly learning AI/ML stuff. Or maybe you don't end up in CS at all. A lot of people don't work in their college majors (I was in journalism and environmental science before doing dev work, and my first few dev jobs paid $15/hr). You're not "bottom-tier" unless you're just objectively terrible. You're new, which is very different from "shitty". Importantly, you have a window of a few years where people and companies are still willing to take a chance on you, give you time to prove yourself and discover your abilities (and limits), etc. That doesn't happen so much for many of us in our mid- or late-careers. I'm not trying to make this about us, just saying that you have some advantages too. In any case, fundamentally your meaning isn't (I hope) determined by your job. Very few people in the world are lucky enough to have a job that they love and derive substantial meaning and life satisfaction from. You still have a chance to find that if you're lucky, but even if you don't, there are so many opportunities to grow and learn and create meaning in your life. At least you're seeing all this unfold in real-time, at the very start of your career and adult life, and can choose how to navigate it step by step. Don't get too discouraged! |