Getting a BA in Underwater Basketweaving from your local commuter state university is much less financially damaging than at Duke or UChicago.
I'm not a fan of the idea of "useful" and "useless" degrees (ime, the best predictor for success is critical thinking skills, not major), but I do find private universities don't make as much financial sense, especially given that well paying industries like Engineering, Accounting, etc don't place much weight on your initial Alma mater beyond your first job.
Anecdotally, I had an alumni interview with a successful tech IB/PE/HF alum from CS@CMU years ago while I was applying to colleges, and he was very insistent about how he felt the RoI at SJSU or CalPoly is superior to CS@CMU. I didn't end up attended CMU (I was lured to a more "prestigious" LAC) but he was absolutely right.
That's the twist though. If your first job is better, the second job is likely better too. It took me a decade before I made it to a first class job, sitting next to people who worked there straight out of college.
That's why Baruch has Ivy level representation in IB and High Finance, and SJSU plus CalPoly SLO has Stanford level representation in the tech industry at large.
Just looking at the Linkedins of the most successful EMs, PMs, and SEs in my network, most attended a normal state flagship and worked at an "OK" company like Oracle or Splunk.
This whole "FAANG"-or-bust or "Ivy"-or-bust mentality is legitimately divorced from reality, especially now that the market is legitimately horrid for new college grads.
> It took me a decade before I made it to a first class job
What do you define as a "first class job"? Where was your first job located? Were you open to moving to a major tech employment hub (eg. Bay Area, Seattle, Austin, NYC)? Did you start your career during a tech slowdown (eg. 01-04, 08-12, 20-21, 23-present)?
"Meh" companies like Oracle or Cisco pay early-to-mid career employees roughly the same as similarly leveled employees at Google or Amazon.
The main thing is, these employees need to be based in the Bay Area, Seattle, or Austin to justify those salaries.
And if you start your career during a hiring slowdown, it doesn't matter if you went to Stanford or SJSU - you're screwed. I'm already seeing the desperation right now at on-campus recruiting events at Harvard/MIT as well as at regional publics.
Well from the sounds of it you've gotten on track! And that's something us Techies take for granted.
If you don't get on the career train for law or finance on time, you're de facto unemployable.
And this is why I love being in tech - we can grind and still find a strong path to upward mobility.
Hard skills like engineering, accounting, actuary, and medicine/dentistry/nursing are always employable. Sure you may earn less in some downturns, but at least we can get jobs.
And, unlike high finance, so long as you keep kinda up to date on technology and architecture, you can negotiate your way into IB level salaries (IB, VC, and High Finance pays fairly bad for the hours spent working, and I myself imagine returning to being a SWE).
Getting a BA in Underwater Basketweaving from your local commuter state university is much less financially damaging than at Duke or UChicago.
I'm not a fan of the idea of "useful" and "useless" degrees (ime, the best predictor for success is critical thinking skills, not major), but I do find private universities don't make as much financial sense, especially given that well paying industries like Engineering, Accounting, etc don't place much weight on your initial Alma mater beyond your first job.
Anecdotally, I had an alumni interview with a successful tech IB/PE/HF alum from CS@CMU years ago while I was applying to colleges, and he was very insistent about how he felt the RoI at SJSU or CalPoly is superior to CS@CMU. I didn't end up attended CMU (I was lured to a more "prestigious" LAC) but he was absolutely right.