Computer Science Remains a Secure Career Choice

A key to money management for young adults is to get on a path to a career that will quickly pay them a high salary and continue to reward their hard work, knowledge and experience. Young adults need to consider this career field and begin to prepare as soon as possible, as experience can be valued as highly as education.

For the most part, the job market is tough, unemployment is high, people are having trouble feeding their families and paying their bills. For computer programmers with college degrees in computer science related subjects, the world is your oyster. Many large companies are even paying signing bonuses to secure qualified candidates, in addition to six figure salaries. Sometimes they even seek experience over education and will take a candidate without a degree, but with strong programming experience.

With the explosion of the Internet, the required hardware backbone and networking as well as the software programming for the computers, tablets and mobile devices, the amount of jobs needed to provide all that data is also exploding. We now use the Internet for shopping, video streaming, audio downloading, all of which needs programmers.

Young adults may be able to turn their love and knowledge of technology into an extremely lucrative and rewarding career, one that can begin the instant they graduate from college. They could develop video games and design and program Facebook or Twitter pages instead of just using them.

Young adults should consider working towards a bachelor's degree in the technology fields of Computer Sciences, Math and Electrical Engineering, especially with regards to software development as they are all in huge demand. There are far more jobs than bodies.

Some companies are taking the demand for these qualified candidates public. Online retailer overstock.com not only offers a $10,000 signing bonus to the employee they hire, they also pay a $5000 "bounty" to whoever delivers them the successful candidate. That's a $10,000 signing bonus, on top of a starting salary of around $100,000 a year and a relocation package to pay for moving costs.

In addition to bonuses and high salaries, these companies typically offer stock options, great benefits and really great work environments and perks. Overstock.com's Software Developer II position only requires 2-5 years of experience, along with the appropriate bachelor's degree and skillset. The listing even mentions "equivalent experience" as an alternative to the bachelor's degree.

Another company, ARAYA Staffing, a San Diego-based high tech employee recruiter, offers a $1000 referral fee for an Android Java Engineer position that pays the successful candidate $100K a year salary and requires only a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Software or Computer Engineering, with seven years of experience.

The key is to start early. Young adult who have or show an interest or aptitude in this area should be encouraged to pursue it. They should be encouraged to study programming, build their own websites and have fun learning the new concepts and ideas. Young adults can start to learn Java and other programming languages and concepts so by the time they are in college, they can already have a few years of programming experience under their belts.

The pursuit of a goal can also help young adults stay focused and on track, keeping them away from negative influences. Their grades and perspective on school may also change, both for the better. And as we have seen with the billionaires created by Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter, young adults may discover or create the next big thing in technology themselves.

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