 Computer science versus computer engineering. Should you get a computer science degree or a computer engineering degree? That is the topic of today's video. This is a very common question that I get on the channel and many people who are considering a computer science major also consider a computer engineering major. And we're gonna be going over some of the most important things like salary, job satisfaction, job growth, flexibility, the respect of the degree, the brand name recognition of the degree, the difficulty as well as other X factors that might contribute. And if you appreciate videos like this, make sure to let me know by gently tapping that like button, commenting down below. And if you haven't done it already, hit that subscribe button and ring the notification bell so that you never miss out. Oh, and share this video with somebody else who needs to see it as well. So let's get started. First of all, let's define exactly what computer science and computer engineering is. According to the almighty Oracle Google, computer science is the study of computers and algorithmic processes, including their principles, hardware, software designs, their applications, and their impact on society. And computer engineering is a branch of electrical engineering that integrates several fields of computer science and electronic engineering required to develop computer hardware and software. So computer engineering does cover some computer science, but it also focuses more on the hardware side of things. And funny enough, computer science has very little to actually do with computers. With a computer science degree, you're gonna focus a lot more on data structures, algorithms, programming languages and frameworks, et cetera. Whereas computer engineering is the one where you focus on actual computers. So you can kind of view computer engineering as a combination of computer science and electrical engineering. Now, as with many different technology related careers, as well as disciplines, there is a ton of overlap and it's gonna vary depending on the program you go to as well. But with that being said, the first thing we're gonna talk about is salary. With a computer engineering degree, you can expect to make about $79,000 a year starting out and 131,000 in mid-career pay. With a computer science degree, you'd make $75,000 a year starting out and 123,000 in mid-career pay. So you can see here that a computer engineering degree does edge computer science out just a little bit. Now, one career path you might go down with a computer engineering degree would be computer hardware engineer, and they can expect to make around $119,000 per year. One career path you might go down if you got a computer science degree would be software developer and they make about $110,000 a year. Glassdoor has computer engineers making about $109,000 a year and they have software developers making slightly more at about $109,900 a year. Now, one thing I will note here is in some countries, software engineering and computer science are the same thing, right? So if you get a software engineering degree, it's the same as getting a computer science degree. Whereas in the United States, there's actually a distinction between the two. So if you became a software engineer, you could expect to make around $116,000 a year according to Glassdoor. And you see a lot of absolutely ridiculous salaries if you look at websites that are open source like levels.fyi. And this is where you can report how much you're making at different companies. So for instance, we see somebody just reported here that they made $300,000 a year at Google. Now, this is not your typical software development, software engineering job. It's not easy to get into a lot of these big companies but it is possible and that shows that there is a lot of room for growth. But with that being said, a lot of the time computer engineering major graduates end up going into software anyways. Now, if you look at how much engineers make over a lifetime, it's actually number one out of all different types of degrees. And number two is computer and math related degrees. So it's $3.5 million over a lifetime versus 3.1 million. They're both much higher than the average of $2.4 million over a lifetime. And according to the Hamilton project over a lifetime computer engineering majors do make slightly more than computer science majors. So overall, I do have to give a slight edge to computer engineers when it comes to salary, but it's really gonna depend on the person and what their goals are. And by the way, if you're not sure what your goals are, like you're not sure what career you're going for, that's probably the most common question that I get on this channel. So what I decided to do is create a free six step guide that distills my entire process for figuring out what career path you want to go down. And that is available completely free down in the description below. It's also gonna be accompanied with a newsletter that is gonna send out exclusive content. Next, we're gonna be talking about satisfaction. So according to pay scale, people who get a computer science degree have a meaning score of about 42% and a meaning score of about 46% for those who get a computer engineering degree. Meaning is basically how much you think your job positively impacts the world. Now, according to Glassdoor, when you look at the careers that have the highest overall job satisfaction when you take everything into account, you see a ton of software development related careers. In fact, over half of the top 10 are filled with software development, software engineering related careers. And when you look at the top companies to work at, you see that many of them are in the technology field. And technology related companies, especially ones that are in the S&P 500, are known to treat their employees extremely well. And they do this because there is fierce competition for the best talent. Now, like I said before, there is a ton of overlap here. A lot of the time people who get computer engineering degrees end up working in software, but it is a straighter path for you to learn computer science, which is gonna help you more with the software side of things right off the bat. So overall, I have to give these slight edge to computer science here. Next, we're gonna be talking about job growth. And if you look at the different careers, computer hardware engineers are growing at about 2%, which is slower than average. And on top of that, there's only about 66,000 jobs. Software developer, for instance, has about 1.8 million jobs and it's growing at 22%, which is much faster than average. On top of that, if you look at the Zip Recruiter Skills Index, you'll see that software engineering is number one overall. It is literally the most valuable skill that you can learn on their skills index. And if you look at the top 20 or so, you're gonna see a lot of software development, software engineering related skills. And lastly, I made my own degree ranker. I recently updated its version 2.0 now. And computer science has a demand score of 154. I believe it is the number one demand score out of any degree, whereas computer engineering has a very healthy demand score of 107, which is great, but it's still nowhere near the demand score of computer science. So even though computer engineering is great here, I do have to give the edge to computer science. Next, we're gonna be talking about flexibility. So if you get a computer engineering degree, you can work in hardware, but like I mentioned before, you can also work in software. Whereas if you get a computer science degree, you can work in software, but it's not nearly as easy for you to work with hardware. Now of course, there are exceptions here, especially in the technology industry. There is a ton of room for horizontal growth. A lot of the time you'll see people become IT professionals and they move from IT. They become like cybersecurity professionals. And then they learn a little bit of coding with cybersecurity and then they moved into software development. So that's one of the wonderful things about technology is there is so many different opportunities and so much room for growth. But in this category, I actually have to give computer engineering the edge because of the fact that you also have the ability to easily work with hardware as well as software. Next, we're gonna be talking about the respect of the degree. So both of these degrees are highly, highly respected. I've talked a lot on this channel about how when you look at different engineering careers, they might be, I wouldn't say saturated, but they don't have a ton of opportunity. But the reason why you see engineering degrees doing so well is because of the fact that people love to hire engineers. They know they're getting somebody who's very smart and hardworking. And computer science kind of has that going for it as well. And in some countries, computer science is software engineering. So computer science is actually considered to be engineering in some countries. And then some schools actually have their computer science program in the engineering building. And engineering careers, when you look over a lifetime, they get paid really well. But what's even more interesting is they tend to make a ton of money no matter what career path they go down. So engineers that go into arts and media still make $3 million over a lifetime. And engineers that go into community, service and legal make $3.2 million. So lots of industries hire and pay engineers for jobs that don't necessarily have anything to do with engineering. And computer science has a lot of that same sort of thing going for it. Now it doesn't look as good just because it's relatively new. I mean, the major's only been around for a few decades. But again, if you look at these Zippercruiter Skills Index, a lot of the skills that are associated with computer science, like software development, et cetera, are incredibly valuable. Software is taking over all kinds of different industries and that trend is probably not gonna stop anytime soon. So for this section, they're both so good when it comes to respect. I'm gonna have to give them a tie. Next, I'm gonna be talking about brand recognition. And this is an incredibly powerful force that is kind of silly, but you know, you can't deny the power of it. So what do I mean by brand recognition? The reason that you buy Pepsi and Coke is because you see it all the time. Familiarity with a product makes you exponentially more likely to buy that product. And the same thing goes with degrees. If you have hired a bunch of people who graduate with a mechanical engineering degree, you're more likely to hire more people in the future who graduated with that degree. Just because of the fact that you're familiar with it and you sort of have an idea of what you're gonna get. Most people are very risk averse, so they don't really wanna take the chance to hire somebody who has maybe a mechatronics engineering degree. And so as silly as it is, brand name recognition for different degrees definitely matters. Now, engineering degrees, generally speaking, do have really good brand name recognition, but computer science degrees have a lot more graduates. So there was about 26,000 graduates last year in computer science and 8,000 in computer engineering. So I think these two things kind of balance each other out. Engineering degrees in general sort of have better brand recognition, but computer science degrees, there's more graduates, so I'm gonna call this one a wash. Next, we're gonna be talking about the difficulty of the degree itself and the winner here is gonna be the one that's less difficult, right? So I hope that doesn't confuse anybody. The winner here is gonna be the degree that is less difficult. So everybody knows that STEM degrees tend to be very difficult. They have high dropout rates. Sometimes they take people longer to graduate, so instead of taking four years, it might take you five or even six. And overall, when you look at the data, including dropout rate, as well as how many hours you have to study per week, computer engineering does rank higher. So computer engineering is harder at 14th hardest. Computer science is the 37th hardest major. And if you look at all the other majors, the top 20 is just chocked full of engineering related degrees. Now, computer science is definitely no walk in the park and at some universities, it's gonna be more difficult than others. And computer science actually does have the highest dropout rate out of any degree at major universities. But that doesn't necessarily have to do with the difficulty of the degree. I think it has more to do with the reality versus expectations. And also the fact that software development is one of those careers that you can sort of get into without necessarily getting a degree. So many people get into computer science and then they maybe take their first year or two. And then they're like, you know what? I think I'm just gonna kind of self teach myself this and try to get a career without finishing my degree. So when you see that high dropout rate, it doesn't necessarily mean that a bunch of people hate it or it's a bad investment or it's really difficult. There are other factors to consider there. But overall, when it comes to difficulty, you do have to give this one to computer engineering. Next, we're gonna be talking about X factors. And this is basically anything that I thought was important that didn't fit into the other categories. So when it comes to automation, computer hardware engineers have about a 4% chance of automation, polling shows 27%. And then computer and information research scientists have a 4% chance of automation and polling shows 25%. So basically neither of them are going to get automated. And when it comes to the likelihood that your job might get outsourced, also very unlikely. There are a bunch of talented programmers all throughout the world, but anybody who's actually worked on technology and software will tell you that communication is one of the most important things when it comes to team building and creating a really good product. And working with somebody in another country who's not familiar with the culture, doesn't communicate quite as well is going to cause difficulties. So I know a lot of people are really afraid of outsourcing when it comes to software development especially, but I don't think you need to be all that afraid of it. And with computer engineering, it's much more hands-on. It's kind of hard to create hardware like a physical product without actually being there. So it's also not very likely to be outsourced. But the thing that really gives computer science the edge here is just the fact that learning programming is one of the few skills where you can have infinite leverage. One person can create a computer program, application, a website or a piece of software that millions of people can use. There are very few skills out there that have that possibility. And so because of the fact that computer science focuses more on that side of thing, the software side, I have to give CES the slight edge when it comes to X factors. Now, with that being said, CES did win slightly overall here, but these are both phenomenal degrees. And whenever you are deciding between two really good degrees, two degrees that you know you're gonna get your money's worth from, there's two things that I think about. The first one is you wanna consider the factors that best fit into your plan and your personal strengths. So if you know 100% that you're gonna go into hardware, then maybe you should just consider getting the computer engineering degree. If you've imagined the lifestyle you want in the future and you know for sure that you wanna have a remote job, a computer science degree might be the better choice for you, but overall, the number two thing I consider, and this is the most important thing, is just go with the one that you're more passionate about. Go with your gut here, the one that you're really excited about and you know which one you're excited about. Just be honest with yourself. You probably know if you've looked into it. When it comes to all of the kind of like logical, like technical details, you wanna make sure that the degree meets a certain threshold, but beyond that threshold, just go with the one that your instincts tell you to go with or go with the one that you're more passionate about. Check out my other videos right here. I made them just for you. Go ahead, gently tap that like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell and comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms, et cetera, and I will see you next time.