Was reading through this after a Google search on the same question to provide advice for someone. Wanted to tack on as I think it’s a useful question that more and more people are asking and could be useful to just have this thread. Found a couple of interesting links and having gone into finance myself [worked in investment banking, then consulting, now in Silicon Valley at a start up], my bias is definitely towards CS [which I didn’t study].
Found a cool LinkedIn post today that I thought laid out some of the benefits [and also some benefits for studying finance]: https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/pulse/computer-science-vs-finance-saleem-s-khatri?trk=prof-post
This part in particular:
Solving actual, meaningful problems that will impact the world. Advances in computing have allowed humans to perform remarkable feats of technology and create systems that we would have otherwise deemed impossible. This ranges from code breaking (e.g., Alan Turing in WWII) to building the search engine to cryptocurrencies. CS is moving the world forward – that sounds a lot more exciting than building Excel models and pitch books for 100 hours every week.
Innovation is rewarded. If you’re good, that’s all that matters. There isn’t politicking or a never ending rat race to get noticed. It’s all about your code. A small company called ITA software blew the hyper-competitive airfare search industry wide open by writing an incredible piece of code in Lisp. They got bought by Google, for $700 million. Good engineers and computer scientists are compensated extremely well. It’s no coincidence that most of the wealth that has been created over the past 20 years is centered in Silicon Valley.
You’re part of a community. Programmers tend to be thoughtful and kind people. That’s my personal experience at least. It’s programmers who brought you Reddit. It’s programmers who worked together to create Bitcoin. It’s a collaborative community that engages itself in a meaningful way to solve complex problems and is driven by more than just a desire to get wealthy.