Ask HN: Mechanical Engineering or Computer Science

1 points by Theitheave42 3 years ago | 4 comments

I’m honestly kinda stuck in the middle of deciding over mechanical engineering or computer science with a lean towards mech e.

With my lovely four year experience within FIRST Tech Challenge (as well as an additional five years within FIRST LEGO League) as a main CAD designer and going on to win the Design Award at one of many FIRST Championship visits, my deep love for puzzles and LEGO, and a high attitude towards spatial awareness, my main choice was mechanical engineering, but upon looking around at different salary ranges I wasn’t extremely happy. I suppose I’d be perfectly fine with an 80k starting salary, but feel like I’d want/need to look into other income streams.

Plus, I was pretty disappointed to find out that a lot of mech e jobs with hands on experience are apparently rare; however, feel like I could easily rely on some hobby spaces to cure my want for hands on projects.

On the other hand, with my deep love for computers and software it feels like comp sci could be a good fit. I’ve always loved tinkering with any sort of code. For example, whether it be simply editing HTML or CSS code for a website to play around with the changes or heavily custom modifying stock iOS (and playing around with root access) on my jailbroken iPhone. However though, I still have yet to really write a handful of programs.

So after finding out about how much SWE salaries are and the higher pay ceiling, I was definitely excited to look into it more. Feels like I’d be choosing it mainly for better pay, benefits, and working conditions. Plus, the thought of remote work seems really appealing.

I do love the statement about how one doesn’t need to feel like that aren’t able to switch carrier paths ever. Though I really don’t have the desire to plan on spending the time put towards a partial career in mech e and then eventually switch to SWE down the road.

I certainly already think more spatially, physically, and mechanically, than I do algorithmically so feels like I truly just have to listen to my heart and go with mech e, but at least explore comp sci even more during my spare time. I’m thinking at least a major in mech e and a possible minor in comp sci.

Any thoughts or experience on the topic would greatly be appreciated. Feel free to discuss anything related to the topic.

sargstuff 3 years ago |

So, perhaps explore things where computer science & mechanical engineering overlap.

Both fields (cs & me) are by themselves general degrees where need to specialize / focus in on a given subject area(s) within the field to do real world applications. aka 3d printing (injection molding, mechanical processes modeling), robotics, automotive engineering, etc.

Beyond a salary, what expecting /looking for beyond just a job opportunity? (aka company type/size: startup / small company / position at large corporation / etc. )

Talking to others within CS / ME fields and/or researching organizations such as ACM[0], ASME[1], etc can help show case different use cases / things that make use of CS / ME backrounds.

-- can always look at use cases such as apple (jobs & wozniac); microsoft (gates & balmer); and/or company stories with a more of a mechanical engineering backround [1][2]

If had started at motorola after WWII, when company focus was on household appliances; would have stuck around when things shifted to cpu processors?

[0] : https://www.acm.org/

[1] : https://www.asme.org/about-asme/engineering-history

[2] : https://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=282890&p=1885058

dougmwne 3 years ago |

All we can do is to tell you that right now, salaries are much higher in software. There’s no guarantee that will be true for the next 40 years, but it is true now. The US is home to many of the world’s largest software companies and manufacturing is largely done overseas.

The difficulty of a job and the amount of education and smarts it requires is unrelated to the pay. Pay is just a function of the supply and demand for the talent and how much value the role can create for a business.

Sure, pay could change in the future but software salaries have a long way to fall before they are as low as mech e salaries.

sn9 3 years ago |

You can always minor in CS and get most of the benefit while studying ME.

Theitheave42 3 years ago |

Oops, disregard the double title.