All i hear about is how going into IT in any form is a terrible choice because there isn't any jobs for recent CS grads unless you go to a big school/have an amazing GPA. Is it really that hard to get a job out of school these days? I'm interested in majoring in CS but I might have second thoughts if this is true. I live and plan to work in Texas btw

there are heaps of jobs in london, I imagine any big city will be the same.

There are also a lot of people with good experience (highly knowledgable) but are really sucky in the algorithm department. This is where you can shine if youve got raw problem solving skillz which is typical for people with a background in game development.

If you can differentiate yourself from the clutter of career monkey programmers your laughing. There is a lot of bad code out there waiting to be fixed by you.

Programming is like Real Estate but with infinite land and everyone wants to build. There are loads of jobs and always will be.

There is also great potential for shifting into different positions - design / project/account management / sales&marketing - if your in the right place.

Other than that you should study whatever you love.

[edit] missed your last line. If you want the big opportunities and interesting roles you should be prepared to move. If you don't want to move then your choice will always be limited in any industry.

I don't know where you live exactly, but in the United States it has been found that the unemployment rate for software engineers is 1.7%. That's a very small percentage. In fact, the advice from many people is to continually search for a career in anything to do with computers and anything to do with mathematics, as the unemployment rate for Statisticians is 3.2%.

I am not saying that this one factor should sway your decision completely, but it is something to consider.

All i hear about is how going into IT in any form is a terrible choice because there isn't any jobs for recent CS grads unless you go to a big school/have an amazing GPA. Is it really that hard to get a job out of school these days? I'm interested in majoring in CS but I might have second thoughts if this is true. I live and plan to work in Texas btw

What do you perceive is encompassed by the term IT? For some it implies anything minutely related to computers, from system administration to the average code monkey. And a few others like to emphasize that there is a clear distinction between IT, software engineering, and other such technically related fields.

To get back to the point, there are plenty of entry level jobs out there for CS undergrads in Texas, especially if you are willing to relocate to a metropolitan area such as Dallas or Austin. The challenge is that employers are looking for candidates with the most talent and expertise related to the open position, so expect a lot of competition.

Having an amazing GPA and going to a big school helps, but is definitely not required. People are more concerned with what you have done. If you haven't done anything then they are required to look at your performance in school since it's all you've got. If you have a couple of indie projects under your belt, no matter how small, that'll help. So put together a portfolio and attach a link to your resume.

You are also in Texas which has a lot of tech. You should be fine from that standpoint as long as your willing to move anywhere in the state. When people isolate themselves to some out-of-nowhere town and refuse to move, they will run into issues. You need to be able to move.

Stay motivated. Things will work out as long as you keep pushing forward.

Also if you can't find a real job you can always turn to web development. </troll> I just graduated and went into graduate studies. Try to get a job as a programmer for your university. It's good work experience if you find the right place.

While I job hunted I found a much bigger factor to be finding a job in the area of IT/Software Development you want. If I were searching for any SE job, I probably could have started a month after graduation with good pay. I didn't want to do that, I wanted to make games, and it was a pretty bad time to be looking for SE entry level positions when you live in an area with very very few game developers because so many studios had layoffs or closures that there were a bunch of jobless experienced SEs that make an entry level SE. If you are open to the industry you want to get into and the role you want to fill I really wouldn't worry all that much.

At least here in Utah, actually-talented CS grads are in such high demand that the bigger companies buy billboards begging for programmers to apply. I'm in the market to hire a few more in the next several months myself. Your market may vary.

Again, that market is for actually talented graduates. Those are reasonably few and far between, relative to the total number of graduates, but fortunately it's pretty easy to tell them apart from the crowd. The people who get hired

• do their own side projects,
• are interested and educated on emerging technology (web devs: Do you know what node.js is, and what have you built with it?), and
• can write a small piece of code on demand in an interview without spending loads of time or missing lots of errors.
  That said, if anyone knows some talented developers in Utah, (get ready for epic plug) LucidChart is hiring! Just PM me. Wait, does PM still exist in the new GameDev?

web devs: Do you know what node.js is, and what have you built with it?)

How about: What is wrong with it and why it is immature time sink? Or a trivial issue, such as what happens on error. It's kinda of a big and important deal.

This should tell you something about their understanding of end-to-end development process, not just banging out leet "cutting-edge" code and ability to capture low hanging fruit. In any mature ecosystem any problem has already been solved, with node.js it's still primarily NIH until a few years till evolution weeds out dead ends. Is your company willing to support this evolution which is almost guaranteed to end in abandoned code or code that will be superseded by mature full-time maintained libraries.

Granted, employers have often highly unrealistic expectations, but still, someone who even mentions anything beyond code (deployment, versions, migration, tooling, build, automatization) will likely scale much better than someone who knows ins-and-outs of syntax but doesn't care about anything else. This is especially prevalent in academia, where anything beyond solving the algorithm is actively despised since it's menial task. You get people who will prove N==NP twice during the interview - but sneer at actually implementing the solution, since the problem is solved and something sysadmins should worry about.

Source code is something any semi-interested coder will eventually dig deep enough into. The interesting ones are those that look beyond as well. Even if it's customizing vim or emacs, having full build/install/deployment system (gnumake, cmake, chef, puppet, custom scripts, heck - anything).

That is, unless hiring for big shops which require uber-specialists, but those are subject to different rules and often certification.

In Ireland there are more IT jobs than other kinds of jobs.

The biggest thing you can do (here, at least) to ensure you can find jobs is to get envolved with user groups (basically anything you can do to network is good, for example, a lot of people I know got their jobs through user groups such as Python Ireland or Ruby Ireland - the more contacts you have in industry, the better your chances). Contributing to open source projects or publishing your work online is beneficial too as it shows potential employers not only what you're capable of but also that you are interested and motivated enough to work on projects in your own time and helps differentiate you from the average programmer. Anything that you can do to differentiate yourself from the crowd is going to help you.