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Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

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Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#31

Post by ghaff »

volemo wrote: post #16
zettapwn wrote: post #2

[flagged]

> “Learn to code” ceases to be good advice if too many people do. I believe "learn to code" is a great advice, nonetheless; the skill is highly applicable. The bad idea is thinking that alone will land you a cushy job.

I'll observe that, at a top-rate tech school I'm pretty familiar with, major + computing is a very prevalent option in a lot of the majors. As an undergrad (pre-PCs), I graduated with one computer programming course in FORTRAN and that was pretty much the only time I touched a computer keyboard undergrad. You can't really do that today in engineering/sciences.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#32

Post by ghaff »

rvz wrote: post #29
zettapwn wrote: post #2

[flagged]

> 1. Overproduction. Even liberal arts colleges have 15-20% of students majoring in computer science. “Learn to code” ceases to be good advice if too many people do. "Learn to code" was the scam to address the so-called "skills shortage" BS in programming. Even worse, the skills that was pushed were also the most automatable: HTML, CSS and especially Javascript just to get $250k roles which was the most unsustainable…

"Skills shortage" isn't BS. But minimal front-end learnings aren't the fix.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#33

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

Maro wrote: post #21
felixarba wrote: post #8

> Every kid with a laptop thinks they're the next Zuckerberg, but most can't debug their way out of a paper bag I feel like I've seen this quote many times over the years. Also, how do they calculate employment rate? If you get a job at McDonald's while having a civil engineering degree or nutrition science, that counts as employed as well, no? Would be good to see how many are actually employed in their field of stu…

> If you get a job at McDonald's while having a civil engineering degree That would be under_employment (vs un_employment). Un_employment refers to people actively seeking work but unable to find it, while under_employment encompasses individuals who are working but not fully utilizing their skills or working fewer hours than they would like

Bad term. If I get employed as a quantitative trader on Jane Street after completing a philosophy major am I underemployed because I'm not writing papers on ontology? Why do other people get to say what my "full utilization" is without even knowing me?

Underemployment as "not working as many hours as you'd like" is the standard definition, and that one actually does seem to respect people's interiority.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#34

Post by dinetrimr »

ramesh31 wrote: post #11
cs_throwaway wrote: post #3

CS professor with 15 years experience. The massive boom in computer science enrollment over the last 20 years has been driven mostly by people chasing tech salaries, not by any real interest in computing itself. These students often show up completely unprepared for how difficult CS actually is, and universities have responded by dumbing down their programs to keep everyone happy and enrolled. If this weeds out the p…

Thank you for saying this because it feels like these people entering the industry in such numbers over the 2010s completely killed what made this job fun in the first place. I call them "ticket completers". Sure they can mechanically perform the minimum requirements of the job, but there is zero interest at all in what is actually being done; just following PM directions to the letter with no further thought. The wh…

Hackers could like hacking outside their job for hobby but find job itself soul crushing. More like hackers and nerds that can withstand the corporate demand to grind will be left, rest get filtered. Plenty of talented people can be left outside the cog machine but cook up apps nobody but they care about

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#35

Post by Maro »

rvz wrote: post #9

This is nothing (it will get worse) compared to what will happen in 2030. Just look at what is happening in just the last 5 to 6 months since this prediction was made [0]. The definition of "AGI" was hijacked to mean all sorts of things to the companies that operate the AI systems, even conflicting with each other on timeframes and goals. But what really is the true definition of "AGI" is the blueprint inside the WEF…

> with all those savings going to the AI companies

I'm not even sure those savings will "go" anywhere, they will just stay with the companies. Right now, if I use my $20/mo ChatGPT subscription to automate away my secretary's job ($3,000/mo or whatever), it's not like those $3,000/mo is going to OpenAI. And I don't think in the future they will be able to jack up prices, because foundational LLM models have become a race to the bottom.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#36

Post by sofixa »

paxys wrote: post #30
cs_throwaway wrote: post #3

CS professor with 15 years experience. The massive boom in computer science enrollment over the last 20 years has been driven mostly by people chasing tech salaries, not by any real interest in computing itself. These students often show up completely unprepared for how difficult CS actually is, and universities have responded by dumbing down their programs to keep everyone happy and enrolled. If this weeds out the p…

Even 20 years ago back when I was in college you had a sizable portion of kids who came in to study computer science thinking it would be fun and games. They were then made to study formal logic in their first semester and debug segfaults in gdb in the next, and by the end of the first year pretty much all of them had switched majors. Anecdotally I've heard that very few CS programs even use C++ anymore, and schools…

While C++ is unquestionably still widely used, outside of legacy and some niches (like embedded) it's not in the top 3 "best" choices. Why teach a more complicated language with a poorer ecosystem and toolchain than is actually needed?

I think there's still value in starting with C and C++, to see where it's coming from and see how much tooling and DX has improved, but I can't really blame courses jumping directly to the more useful things.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#37

Post by lazide »

dagw wrote: post #28
zettapwn wrote: post #2

[flagged]

“Learn to code” ceases to be good advice if too many people do. Completely disagree. No matter what job you end up with, you will almost certainly be able to do it a bit better if you know how to code. Knowing how to code is basically always a plus when applying for a job. However "just learn to code a little bit, and nothing else" is probably bad advice.

Everyone has finite amounts of ‘shits’ to give (albeit some activities multiply instead of subtract on that front!). If they spend it on coding instead of something else, hopefully it was worth it eh?

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#38

Post by orwin »

zettapwn wrote: post #2

[flagged]

'learn to code' is a great advice for anybody. If you're a biology major and need to check the world molecules database (forgot the name, sorry), being able to write your own query goes a long way despite the nocode solutions.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#39

Post by lazide »

ghaff wrote: post #32
rvz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Overproduction. Even liberal arts colleges have 15-20% of students majoring in computer science. “Learn to code” ceases to be good advice if too many people do. "Learn to code" was the scam to address the so-called "skills shortage" BS in programming. Even worse, the skills that was pushed were also the most automatable: HTML, CSS and especially Javascript just to get $250k roles which was the most unsustainable…

"Skills shortage" isn't BS. But minimal front-end learnings aren't the fix.

‘Skills shortage’ is similar to complaining about STEM shortages. It’s mostly BS.

The complaint isn’t about n people not being available, it’s about n people not being available for x low price, or z terrible working conditions.

No matter how cheap or how widely available, some folks will still complain because for some folks, even if they had to pay $0, it still would be ‘too much’ if people also demanded human rights.

It’s similar to the ‘where have all the good men gone’, or ‘why don’t people want to work anymore?’, etc. complaints.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#40

Post by msgodel »

sofixa wrote: post #36
paxys wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even 20 years ago back when I was in college you had a sizable portion of kids who came in to study computer science thinking it would be fun and games. They were then made to study formal logic in their first semester and debug segfaults in gdb in the next, and by the end of the first year pretty much all of them had switched majors. Anecdotally I've heard that very few CS programs even use C++ anymore, and schools…

While C++ is unquestionably still widely used, outside of legacy and some niches (like embedded) it's not in the top 3 "best" choices. Why teach a more complicated language with a poorer ecosystem and toolchain than is actually needed? I think there's still value in starting with C and C++, to see where it's coming from and see how much tooling and DX has improved, but I can't really blame courses jumping directly to…

Maybe it's selection bias because I'm an above average C++ programmer but all three large tech companies I've worked at used C++ very heavily.
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