Back to School: The Majors Tech Workers Would Take if They Could Do It Over

With college students across the country all back on campus, the team here at Anthology thought it was a good time to look at the majors that are best positioning students for careers in technology today.

However, we decided to take a slightly different spin on things. Given Anthology users in technology have a very good read of the current trends in the market, and what jobs and education backgrounds are in most demand, we decided to poll them on the majors they’d consider today if they could give it one more “college try”.

Specifically we asked 200 new passive job-seekers on the Anthology platform in September — from companies like Snapchat, Facebook, Uber and many more — “If you could go back in time and pick a new college major for a career today, what would it be (Chose 1)?

While these passive job-seekers worked across many different fields (engineering, product management, marketing, operations, etc.), we wanted to hone in on specific STEM and business majors that we believed they would be most interested in. Not surprisingly, of the major choices we listed in these categories, computer science (44%) was in most demand.

Computer Science is now the most popular major at top universities across the country like Princeton and Stanford (even among young women). Despite growing demand in the technology market for those educated in statistics, business and design, passive job-seekers agree that the demand for computer science majors isn’t going anywhere.

Somewhat surprisingly, Other (30%) came in second. As we were primarily focused on technical fields for standalone answers, this could have referred to a variety of liberal arts majors. Perhaps some tech workers are realizing that a ‘useless’ liberal arts degree is actually in high demand in technology circles today. Or they are simply tired of pulling the all night coding sessions.

Next on the list for current tech workers was majoring in business (9%). Of course, business majors and Silicon Valley have a long history of not exactly seeing eye-to-eye. However, that appears to be changing with both undergraduate and graduate business students.

Rounding out the choices from folks currently working at Facebook, Snapchat and some other top technology companies were Statistics (9%), Graphic Design (5%) and Mechanical Engineering (4%).

With all the big data out there, statistics has become one of the hottest majors in STEM, as all sorts of opportunities open up for those that can analyze and harness the data we have at our finger tips. Meanwhile, although designers may not be in the STEM category, they’ve long been treated as rock stars in Silicon Valley. Future majors of graphic design will be groomed to be UX managers at top technology companies.

Finally, as we go through a bit of a renaissance with hardware and mobility becomes the hot button word in the technology industry (read: autonomous travel & space travel) — mechanical engineering could become a very in demand major (again). Check out some of the current openings just here at SpaceX for mechanical engineers.

What about you? If you had the opportunity to go back to school and pick a major that you believe would set you up for the best career in technology today — what would it be?

Interested in getting matched with better technology positions for your career aspirations in a confidential way? Check out Anthology today!