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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

#51

Post by BoxFour »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #33
Maro wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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?

No, not by the common definition of underemployment. You're not over-qualified to work at Jane Street and presumably you want to work there.

But it would be worth tracking if you wanted to work in academia and ended up at Jane Street. It's about measuring labor demand vs. supply, because labor supply is difficult to measure over time (because people don't just sit forever waiting for a job in their field to open).

> Underemployment as "not working as many hours as you'd like" is the standard definition

These are related concepts and tracked for similar reasons. You're "not working as many hours as you'd like at a job you're qualified for and would like to have". The number of hours you're working at that desired job is 0, and you're replacing it with some undesired job instead.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#52

Post by giantg2 »

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…

"If this weeds out the people who are just there for the paychecks, it might actually be a relief to get back to teaching students who genuinely want to learn about computing."

It's not going to work that way. I was genuinely interested and took many high level electives. I felt the program was very good 15 years ago at the school I attended. I also got an MSIS at a different school, but feel that one was not any more advanced than BS, just a faster pace and weirdly less coding. I did well for years at my job. Now it looks like I might lose my job and probably won't get another IT one. I will probably end up working at Walmart or something.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#53

Post by throw0101b »

ghaff wrote: post #43
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…

There's definitely this disconnect between programming and computer science. For better or worse, a lot of top schools don't even really teach programming in their computer science programs. It's something you just pick up on your own. But not sure that using Python as the specific tool is so bad--based on the MOOC that's what MIT uses in Intro to Algorithms. May be better than spending a lot of time on the vagaries…

> […] a lot of top schools don't even really teach programming in their computer science programs. It's something you just pick up on your own.

"Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes, biology is about microscopes or chemistry is about beakers and test tubes. Science is not about tools. It is about how we use them, and what we find out when we do."

* https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/04/02/computer-science/

* https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Computer_science#Disputed

Perhaps a trade school would be better if someone wants to focus on 'just' programming.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#54

Post by bilbo0s »

ghaff wrote: post #43
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…

There's definitely this disconnect between programming and computer science. For better or worse, a lot of top schools don't even really teach programming in their computer science programs. It's something you just pick up on your own. But not sure that using Python as the specific tool is so bad--based on the MOOC that's what MIT uses in Intro to Algorithms. May be better than spending a lot of time on the vagaries…

Well, essentially you have the language used in the class match the subject being taught.

Python gets language difficulty out of the way of learning a given algorithm. Bonus points for exacerbating the time issue when trying to introduce Big O timing notation. The kids can actually "feel it" in an in your face kind of way.

Systems, it's different, as you say.

Compilers. Different AI courses. And on and on. Each you may have legit reasons for using different languages.

The concern starts to grow when Python is being used across many courses to the exclusion of any other language or technology. That's the issue that's growing across CS departments right now. Couple that with kids who have no interest in learning the other languages on their own and voilá! You have an issue with uninterested kids graduating, but now they're also unprepared.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#55

Post by dpflan »

vintermann wrote: post #50
dpflan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing. Is this similar to what was attracting students to medicine/doctor (guaranteed position with high salary)? But the med-school-to-full-time-physician pipeline is long and can weed out. CS is a difficult subject, certain ways of thinking are difficult but certainly can be learned, like recursive thinking. Did colleges expand their computer science departments or even just create them to meet the dem…

Salary isn't traditionally what motivates people to study medicine. It's prestige. The difficulty is part of the prestige, which is probably why they still do things like memorize long lists of cranial nerve names. I haven't heard that they have a problem with dropout rates. A good CS education only gives you prestige with fellow nerds.

Yes, prestige, perception of self by others, but certainly salary and job guarantee are attractors to medicine. First hand anecdata from educators and doctors alike supports this.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#56

Post by throwaway290 »

msgodel wrote: post #42
zettapwn wrote: post #2

[flagged]

I actually think some of big tech cough Apple cough is a decent short right now. I wanted to do it back in December but it's hard to bring yourself to short the largest companies like that.

Some of big tech (cough tesla cough) was ripe for shorting for many years now but market will be irrational longer than you stay solvent;)

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#57

Post by giantg2 »

Borealid wrote: post #46
giantg2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seem to be relatively few C/C++ jobs, so they went with what the market wanted (Java). They still exposed you to other other types of languages such as assembly, JS, and even COBOL. I really don't think going with python except for an into/cross-major class is a good idea since it's so simple and there aren't that many jobs with it.

I recently heard someone say "I've never had a job that didn't involve at least some Python". I think that's true of almost all computer science jobs in the current market. Python is the primary language for scientific computing and the secondary language for a good number of other tasks.

Yeah, but I'd work that in the same way it's actually used - as a secondary language in one of the data related classes, such as a database course where you learn SQL, then have the students do calculations on in python. Or do it in one of the course that is used for introduction or non-CS students minoring in CS (like business majors). The real thing is that if you learn other stuff like Java, Python is super easy to pick up and doesn't need to be formally taught.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#58

Post by mrkramer »

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…

I tried to study IT(lighter version of CS) without any prior programming experience and our first programming language was Java because apparently with Java you "Write once, run anywhere". But when I saw Java's syntax, I was like....this is not happening. That was the golden age of mobile apps and our focus was on the mobile development since Web was not sexy anymore. I'm actually happy that I quit because all I heard were horror stories of Java's mobile development on Android. My interest is actually Web development and if I had to choose all over again I would rather learn JavaScript. I can only imagine and speculate how hard it is for someone with no prior CS and programming experience to learn computer architecture, assembly, C and C++ for the first time.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#59

Post by ghaff »

throw0101b wrote: post #53
ghaff wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely this disconnect between programming and computer science. For better or worse, a lot of top schools don't even really teach programming in their computer science programs. It's something you just pick up on your own. But not sure that using Python as the specific tool is so bad--based on the MOOC that's what MIT uses in Intro to Algorithms. May be better than spending a lot of time on the vagaries…

> […] a lot of top schools don't even really teach programming in their computer science programs. It's something you just pick up on your own. "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes, biology is about microscopes or chemistry is about beakers and test tubes. Science is not about tools. It is about how we use them, and what we find out when we do." * https://quoteinvestigator.c…

Totally. One consequence which I'm somewhat ambivalent about is that people with interest in engineering fields other than computer science may not be expected to have the degree of familiarity with the tools of the trade that budding computer scientists do. But, given the popularity of computer science as a major, it's probably inevitable to expect that freshmen at least in top schools have done at least some programming.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#60

Post by Moomoomoo309 »

Borealid wrote: post #46
giantg2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seem to be relatively few C/C++ jobs, so they went with what the market wanted (Java). They still exposed you to other other types of languages such as assembly, JS, and even COBOL. I really don't think going with python except for an into/cross-major class is a good idea since it's so simple and there aren't that many jobs with it.

I recently heard someone say "I've never had a job that didn't involve at least some Python". I think that's true of almost all computer science jobs in the current market. Python is the primary language for scientific computing and the secondary language for a good number of other tasks.

I work at a fintech company doing Spring Boot, and the only python I've seen here is in some CI scripts (which I can see but do not have access to edit, we have a team that maintains CI). Everything else is Java, Kotlin, or JS for some websites, that's about it. I've heard the AI teams use python, but while pretty much all the devs in my team know python, we don't use it at all.
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