Re:Ask HN: Should I study CS or Law?
by Max_Ehrlich on Friday October 22, 2021 @10:09PM
(#28965028)
Thanks for this, I agree with everything you've said here. I agree that business skills will ultimately lead to wealth, but I would like to have a degree and be a graduate first.
I know it's going to be a struggle, and I hope I enjoy it at least a little bit if I follow through with CS. Employment is definitely not a good road to wealth, but with CS maybe I will learn those technical skills to make something of value later on.
Be careful with your expectations to become rich in software if you have written zero lines of code (HTML doesn't count) at this point. You may hear about six-figure salaries and lamentations on the supposed developer shortage. However getting from zero lines of code to six figure SV salary (or even any kind of paid developer position) will be a significant challenge, especially if you don't have an intrinsic motivation to do technical work. Software is a bit of gold rush right now and extrinsic motivation can only take you so far when you try to practice dry-as-fuck theoretical CS puzzles in order to pass the interview, or when debugging a gnarly bug.
Lastly, employment is not that good of a way to become wealthy, as it entails making money on someone else's terms. It is in their best interest to pay you as little money as they can get away with. On the other hand, being self-employed enables you to offer your work to market on your own terms, at the price you decide. There's no upper (or lower) bound on how much you can make.