Is it harder to work a full time dev job or be a full time CS student with a part time dev job? I’m currently living the second one and it’s hard to balance both work and school.

It's hard to be a student and have a job in general.

I would say part time job with college might be better.

I did it in college. I worked 25/hrs a week.

But my jobs always had to do with computer science. Lab monitor, TA for comp sci classes, and programmer.

As long as your job is in your field your work at school will not suffer as much. It maybe at times that you will learn from dev job and apply to your classes.

Best of luck!

I had a full time software engineer job while I was a full time CS student and life was very hard, but doable. Barring any unforeseen complications, I think whichever route you stick to is doable but not without sacrifice. Do whatever it is you think you can handle and then buckle up! You know you best.

Used to work 20 hours a week as a web developer. I found that being full time employee is better because your time was never yours in university, there were always projects and tests and assignments to do at home. But if you picked a good job. After 5-6 pm you go sink in your bed and play video games with a clean conscience

I did that. Than decided to quit uni and spend all that time on work. Or rather the university decided to quit on me. Anyways, it paid. Practical experience > pure theory when you know when you need the theory and how to learn it, that was my case,i was at uni long enough to learn it but not long enough to get diploma in compsci.

I was working on a full time job during my master's and balancing the two was really really hard. Since I liked the work I did, I noticed I always ended up compromising on uni work. I ended making a Trello board for my assignments at uni and setting an exact time I would leave work, just so that I could get to uni assignments.
It'll suck while you're managing the two. But by the time you're through it, you would have learnt a lot about how much you can push yourself, how to organise your work and how do you make time management work for yourself. Rest assured, there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

@shivangkumar This is incredibly encouraging. Thank you :)