CJ Nesbit

ENG 1201

Professor Leonard

March 25, 2022

Research Essay Final Draft

The point of the school system is to educate children to provide them with the skills and

information necessary to complete a task, also known as a job. As students proceed through the

different grades, they may notice that they excel in one subject much more easily than another.

Teachers may notice that some students have a natural intuition for certain skills. One of these

talents that can be discovered is in the field of mathematics. Usually, students gifted in this area

are recommended to pursue a college degree. The mystery remains in which degree they should

pursue. Computer science, specifically software engineering, is the best career for students

gifted in mathematics, in all areas. It provides the best salary, job, and life outside of work

opportunities due to its demand in today's modern technological world.

Computer science is a broad and flexible field. It covers software and hardware

development, information technology, etc. Today’s world is making a shift towards a

technological revolution. We live in the information age. The internet is bigger than ever

before and continues to grow every day. It is of utmost importance that companies and

businesses keep up with technology and the opportunities it provides. Thus, all fields of

computer science see increased demand as the world slowly shifts to the internet, especially

due to the influx of internet users after the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to this, the most

applicable computer science field in today’s world is software engineering.

 The job of a software engineer is not much different from working with a team in an

office. Software engineers work with teams where everybody does small jobs that work

towards a bigger goal. Software engineering is a multi-step process. “You code. You test. You

deploy your code. You monitor your code, and make sure things are working properly.”

(Alpiao). You meet with teams to discuss plans and development. Therefore, it’s not unlike

most other jobs. It requires skills to do the job, and social skills to work with a team.

However, is being a software engineer a good job? There are several criteria to judge a

career on. Most people look at salary, job availability, job security, satisfaction, and perks. In

terms of job availability and security, software engineering certainly passes. Software

engineers are in high demand for reasons listed before, which guarantees that there will

always be job offers for them. Due to this, job security is also high, as it is unlikely that a

good software engineer would get laid off. Job satisfaction is also high in the field. Most

software engineers loved coding before pursuing a career, or simply find satisfaction in the

job’s nature. Job perks tend to increase with seniority and demand. Luckily, demand for

software engineers is high, meaning that perks are very likely to be good even at entry-level.

The salary of a software engineer can range massively depending on a variety of

different factors, including programming language, cost of living, and experience. The

average salary for a software engineer in the United States is $108,000 per year. Working for

big companies such as Apple and Google can jump this salary up to $150,000 per year

(BrainStation). Even software engineering jobs outside of the United States are breaking six

figures: The average salary in London was $92,000 - $106,000 in 2019 (Wall Street Journal).

The reason why salaries are rising is plain to see. “Every company is now a tech company and
requires engineering talent to reach its next business milestone, creating an imbalance in

supply and demand for tech talent.”

How tight is the hole of demand? Are degrees or certificates required to get these

fabled six-figure salaries? In the Information Age, one can learn almost any skill or talent

simply by dedicating the effort. Is it worth pursuing higher education if it is not required to

obtain a software engineering job? Even if one obtains a $100,000 job immediately after

obtaining their degree, it will take over six months to pay off student debt. However, most

developers that are making this ‘average’ $100,000 salary are holding their positions firmly. If

someone at the age of 18 were to start their path to their degree today, it would be difficult for

them to get a six-figure salary, as all these jobs are taken by senior developers.

A salary is just a number that represents how much currency you receive each year. A

$100,000 salary could mean two very different things depending on where you live. In New

York City, that would be a decent salary that would pay the bills and allow for a nice amount

of free cash flow. In more rural places, $100,000 would practically be winning the lottery.

Living in a place with low living costs would make it much easier to pay off student debt.

Those who are self-taught get the ease of not having $20-50,000 of student debt on

their shoulders. However, they are likely to have less experience and gaps in their knowledge,

which is a definite red flag for an employer. One of the solutions to this is a portfolio. This

shows the employer that competence does not require a degree. In the end, it depends on your

stage in life and how much experience in any areas you have. For young high school

graduates, a degree would be the way to go, compared to a middle-aged employee looking to

switch careers (Dechalert).

 The best way to determine if a degree is worth it is simply to look at the facts. How

many employed software engineers have degrees? What fields are they working in and how

much do they make per year? The most popular and high-paying fields of software

engineering are applications and system software. The languages that associate with these

fields are C++, C, C#, SQL, Python, and Java. In these fields, roughly 78.5% of software

engineers have degrees. Considering those are the most critical and high-demand software

engineering jobs, it makes logical sense. Employers desire certified, educated people to do

these jobs. Next, system engineers and administrators oversee software networks, specifically

in companies that rely on them, such as schools with online platforms or businesses with

websites. 56.5% of these employees have degrees. Finally, web developers, who usually

program in languages like CSS and HTML, make slightly less than other software engineers

at ~$70,000, but only 46% of them have degrees (Eriksen).

I enjoy coding, even with the very elementary knowledge that I have of it. Most

software engineers were probably like me at some point – young, interested in the career, and

interested yet slightly suspicious of the six-figure salary rumor. Like all good things, software

engineering must have flaws associated with it. The pros of it are the excellent salary, even if

it is not six figures, as well as job security and perks such as remote work for some. Some

cons that are different from mainstream cons that come with all jobs are programming’s

learning curve. The skills and experience needed to become a decent software engineer are

high compared to other jobs.

If job satisfaction is not high, it becomes an obvious con right away. I predict it will be

high, simply because I enjoy the job, but something could show up later and cause my

satisfaction to drop. According to 80000hours.org, high demand leads to high pay which leads
to high bargaining power, which leads to high job satisfaction. One other topic of concern is

the amount of work. However, the average daily work is 8.6 hours for software engineers,

which is roughly forty minutes longer than a 9 to 5 job.

Outsourcing is a tactic that some companies are using to get software engineers for a

much lower price with perhaps the threat of less quality of work and not being able to meet

your employees face-to-face. This brings up the question of the high salary again. Are

software engineers’ salaries so high because of the difficulty of the work they do, the demand,

or the quality of work that is needed? The answer is all three, especially demand. As

mentioned previously, software engineers are in high demand.

To deal with this demand, companies have several options, like outsourcing. However,

one can describe the flow of software engineers in a company as a loop. Demand for them

goes up, so the salary goes up, in hopes of attracting more candidates. The most qualified

candidates will get hired, and usually, they will produce high-quality work. This leads to more

customers being satisfied with the company, making the company larger due to increased

revenue. To keep up with the expansion, the company can hire more engineers, and are free to

keep the high salary due to the increased revenue.

This cycle seems almost perfect. There is one flaw, however. The most ‘qualified’

aren’t always the ones with degrees. This leads to massive discrepancies. Quality of work and

salary can range massively just by crossing the street. So, it is difficult to exactly pinpoint

salary, job security, and satisfaction. An average can be used to assume certain things about a

topic, but there will always be a ceiling, floor, and outliers. This only increases the caution I

must take if I am to pursue this career.

 Since my paper is based on career choices, counterarguments are simply the negatives

and downsides of my selected career, which I already covered. However, another

counterargument could be other career opportunities that relate to the same skillset required

for software engineering. One that I investigated was a mathematics degree. This degree is a

candidate rival for software engineering because of its flexibility. Unlike software

engineering, it can stem off into many different careers that all share one foundation:

mathematics.

Staying local, The Ohio State University offers many different tracks for a

mathematics degree, including Actuarial Science, Theoretical Math, Applied Math, Biology

Math, Financial Math, and Educational Math. Each of these stems out into several different

opportunities.

Most of these jobs pay less than software engineering and have heavier workloads. In

software engineering, day-to-day work is repetitive and predictable, leading to an easier

workload as experience is gained. This curve is present in all jobs; work will get easier as one

adjusts to their environment. However, because software engineering is predictable, the curve

goes faster. The 8.6-hour workday as mentioned before could be minimized by being

efficient. Efficiency can be maximized by making the work environment optimized for the

employee. Since some software engineers work remotely, they have the choice between still

working from home, or going back to the office.

Primary sources from humans who have experienced jobs firsthand are the best

sources of information. Websites and articles can provide valuable information, but usually, it

is from estimates and averages that don’t represent the precise information I am looking for.

The issue with using the internet for gathering this information is the averages represent either
the entire world or a country such as the United States. Finding exact, specific, accurate, local

information is difficult to do on the internet. Luckily, I know some people who either were or

are currently in mathematical career fields. So, I conducted interviews with them asking about

their experiences working in those fields, details about their careers, and the steps they took to

get into their careers.

The first interview subject was a Physicist named Eric Heller. He works at the Wright

Patt Air Force Research Laboratory. He has a doctorate in Physics. I asked him some

questions to compare the differences between a computer science degree and a degree of his

sort. His salary ranges from $100,000 - $120,000 per year, which is well within a comfortable

range for finances. He works for around forty hours

a week, which is comparable to most software and

computer engineering jobs. In terms of job perks,

his work-life balance is good. Any job with fifty or

fewer hours a week usually has a good balance. He

Figure 1: Computers, math, and physics often go also enjoys the benefits of his job being “a trust-
together. (“A student’s guide to Physics Careers”)

based position”, as he puts it. He is expected to do his job well and accurately, report test

findings and solutions quickly and correctly, etc. These high expectations make his work

mostly independent, and he enjoys not being constantly bothered/managed. However, he does

coordinate with others who work in the WPAFRL when working on a large project, usually

something related to aerospace projects.

His job security is very high due to his job being a government job. He only

remembers his job security being threatened during times such as the Cold War in which the

government was not hiring anybody, for fear of Soviet spies obtaining government research
information. While his job sounds great, the path to get there was long. I mentioned

previously that he has a doctorate in Physics, which took him a total of eleven years to obtain.

Due to him being a hard and efficient worker, he was able to get all his high school credits in

three years and go start his major one year early, at Sinclair. He only stayed for one year, then

switched to Wright State for the final three years, where he planned on majoring in Chemistry

but then switched to Physics. He obtained his bachelor’s in physics, and after seven more

years, he obtained his Doctorate. In terms of cost, it cost him nothing. He received a stipend,

so his degree was free, and he received $18,000 a year simply for being a student there.

However, it is important to recognize that his college experience does not in any way

represent the reality of the average student. The interview's final question was about his entry-

level salary, so I could compare it to the salary he had now. He was in the DR2 pay scale,

which made anywhere from $72,666 to $114,103 in 2019. Taking the average of these two

endpoints, I can estimate that he made ~$93,000 at entry-level.

The second person I interviewed was an Electrical Engineer named Chris Fearday. He

too, like Eric, worked for the government for a while, meaning his job security was very high.

He did not specify his education or the cost of it. However, when he was working with the

government, he also made the lowest salary he ever made in his career. The highest salaries he

made often came with companies that offered little to no job security. Working with these

companies (names were not provided) made him around $150,000 a year. Some notable job

perks he had were the insurance benefits some companies offered. He also received

educational benefits from some companies, which meant he could go back to college to obtain

another degree and the cost would be completely covered. However, these companies usually

had the longest work hours, which prevented him from fully enjoying these benefits. His work
hours were forty to fifty when working with the government but could stretch to seventy to

eighty with the more rigorous companies. At entry-level, Chris was on the GS7 pay scale but

made it onto the GS9 scale after one year. This GS9 scale ranges from $47,097 to $59,657 a

year. Taking the average of these two endpoints, I can estimate that he made ~$53,000 at

entry-level.

The next person I interviewed was my father, Jim Nesbit. His official job title is

Director of Information Technology, Institutional Research, and Libraries at Kettering

College. He has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a focus in accounting,

and a Master’s in Business Administration with a focus in Management Information Systems.

He makes $99,000 a year. In terms of the cost and duration of his education, the Bachelor

took five years and cost approximately $30,000 in total. The Master’s took two years and cost

approximately $15,000 in total. His job security is high because his work is like a government

job.

All the jobs mentioned before are like software engineering in some way. Investigating

the interview with Eric Heller, Physics seems like a great field to go into, but unfortunately,

he’s not a good source to model after because he doesn’t represent the average student. He

doesn’t represent the average gifted student either. Perhaps with a lot of dedication and effort,

I could achieve a similar path, but salaries and opportunities may differ from when he was

hired. His experience might earn him his paycheck because he can conduct experiments more

efficiently, which leads me to my next point.

Efficiency is essential in the modern workplace. Some jobs have a required number of

hours, while others have a checklist of things to do before a certain deadline, usually the end

of a week. In the first case, inefficiency could lead to someone working overtime, like a
teacher staying for multiple hours after school to make lesson plans for the next day or grade

assignments. In the second case, depending on the employee’s ability to complete certain

tasks on a list or the number of tasks on said list can affect the number of hours they work. In

software engineering, it is sometimes both. For example, my father works in Information

Technology. He gets paid on an hourly basis, but his workload consists of a to-do list and

deadlines. Regardless of how much work he gets done in eight hours, he gets paid the same,

but he is expected to complete all the tasks he is assigned before the deadlines.

Due to this, I can refute the argument that hourly jobs are better opportunities than

software engineering because software engineering is sometimes an hourly job. The workload

is relatively the same compared to other jobs, but the difficulty of the work is considered

above average. As mentioned before however, this difficulty ramps down as experience is

gained.

Talent in mathematics tends to connect to other talents that are not easily discovered in

the school environment. These talents can be analytical thinking, logic, problem-solving, big-

picture thinking, or detail-oriented thinking. Depending on the other talents of the student,

computer science and software engineering might not be a good career. However, since I am

doing this research paper to discover opportunities for myself, I know my strengths and

weaknesses. Thus, the information I have used before is biased toward my skillset.

This skillset points to software engineering as a promising career for me. It pays well,

has high job security, has good seniority perks, and even good entry-level perks due to its

high demand. It surpasses all other career choices in these fields. It has normal work hours

and perhaps a slightly higher workload, but the people chasing this career and salary are

highly motivated by it. Therefore, it is the optimal career choice.

 Works Cited

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software-engineer.
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a-good-job.

“Career Opportunities.” Department of Mathematics,

https://math.osu.edu/undergrad/career/opportunities.

Dechalert, Aphinya. “Is a Computer Science Degree Still Worth It in the Age of Self-Taught?”
DottedSquirrel, DottedSquirrel, 19 May 2021, https://www.dottedsquirrel.com/computer-
science-degree/.
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Forsbak, Øyvind. “Council Post: How to Deal with the Scarcity of Software Developers.”
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of-software-developers/?sh=222c55c2a0f1.

Heller, Eric. Interview.

Hilton, Benjamin. “Thinking of Becoming a Software Engineer? Read This.” 80,000 Hours, 17
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Loten, Angus. “Software Engineers' Pay Is Rising Faster Outside Silicon Valley.” The Wall
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Nesbit, Jim. Interview.
Tech, Florida. “A Student's Guide to Physics Careers.” Florida Tech News, 15 Aug. 2017,
https://news.fit.edu/academics-research/students-guide-physics-careers/.