Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

newsweek.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 130 posts

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#71

Post by roxolotl »

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…

About 15 years ago when I started my degree there were both the “I want a good job” people and another crowd that I’d describe as having followed a thought process of “I like video games; I want to make video games; I should study comp sci”. At that time at least I think the video game crowd was even less equipped than the job crowd. Not to disparage video games, they are a majority of my free time, but those who were joining the field to _have fun_ are going to have an even harder time than those looking for work.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#72

Post by dschuetz »

mrkramer wrote: post #47
dschuetz wrote: post #6

20ys ago: you must study CS it's in high demand RN! 10ys ago: don't even apply w/o a master's degree! 2ys ago: sorry we're full! 1 week ago: you must study ML it's in high demand RN!

It's old news that markets are dynamic.

Depends on who you ask. It's news to graduates who find themselves w/o a job and zilions in debt.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#73

Post by joshstrange »

bilbo0s wrote: post #45
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…

I think that's what the professor meant when s/he said that schools are "dumbing down" curricula. The amount of Python being taught is a bit concerning even from the perspective of personal economics. If I was paying all that money every term in tuition, I'd want them to teach me the hard stuff. Not the language I can learn in a weekend while I'm shirtless on the couch watching GameDay. It's like no one ever stops fo…

I don’t think I could disagree more strongly.

College should not be about teaching a specific language. It should be teaching the programming skills needed to pick up any language. Python is just as good as C++ in this regard. In fact, if python is an easier on ramp and get people excited about programming and show shows them what’s possible before crushing their soul with C/C++ then I say go for it.

In college, I regularly wrote my programs in PHP language I had taught myself prior to college and then converted them to see to submit my homework/test. While PHP was obviously much slower to run, it let me iterate and develop faster than my peers.

In fact, I find it borderline fraudulent that so many colleges waste time on a language that most graduates will never use. Python knowledge is way more useful than C++ knowledge in my opinion, especially for a new grad.

Then again, I have a very dim view on college CS programs as a whole. They aren’t just fighting the “last war”, they are fighting a war from decades ago. Almost everything that I used in my first job were things that I taught myself, not things that I learned in college. That was one big reason why I dropped out of college my junior year I wasn’t learning anything that was useful for my field. The professors were pedantic and cared about silly things like making sure I put a semicolon at the end of each of SQL queries that I wrote for an exam.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#74

Post by dagw »

giantg2 wrote: post #49
msgodel wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The first real language I learned was C++ and I was decent at it (best in class but mostly stuck with console based programs, nothing advanced like GUIs that year). I have never used it at work. If you look at job boards, it's overwhelmingly stuff like Java, JS/TS frameworks, etc. Why teach it when it seems like less than 10% of postings are looking for it? Might as well teach other languages and just learn it if you…

Why teach it when it seems like less than 10% of postings are looking for it?

And we're back to the discussion of what is the point of a University CS education. I would argue that learning something like C++ is important for the same reason something like Lisp or Haskell is important. Not because it will necessarily help you get a job, but because it introduces you to new concepts and a new way of thinking about programming and computation that will be useful no matter what language you end up programming in for a living.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#76

Post by _aavaa_ »

dagw wrote: post #65
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…

I think CS departments are at least partially responsible for this development. They know that most of the students applying care nothing about Computer Science, have no interest in Computer Science and will never learn Computer Science, yet they keep accepting (and graduating) them. If CS departments actually wanted to teach CS, then they would advocate for setting up a new series of departments/degrees with names l…

University departments do not always have the kind of autonomy your post implies. It is common for the university’s central administration to dictate how many students they must let it, how much money they get per student, and hence how many they can fail without going into the red.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#77

Post by msgodel »

throwaway290 wrote: post #56
msgodel wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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;)

Tesla, both the company and the stock, is pretty complicated. I certainly wouldn't short it right now.

The problem with many of these tech companies is that they've been so successful abusing their users out that they've quit putting energy into developing their products. HP and Sonos are two good recent examples of how this ends.

Tesla doesn't seem to be doing that right now. The big thing you'd be be betting on (long or short) is how successful the robotaxi and optimis will be. I'm not optimistic with either of those (robo taxi seems like it should be practical, it's more about the particular execution) but I also wouldn't be willing to bet against them.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#78

Post by giantg2 »

dagw wrote: post #74
giantg2 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first real language I learned was C++ and I was decent at it (best in class but mostly stuck with console based programs, nothing advanced like GUIs that year). I have never used it at work. If you look at job boards, it's overwhelmingly stuff like Java, JS/TS frameworks, etc. Why teach it when it seems like less than 10% of postings are looking for it? Might as well teach other languages and just learn it if you…

Why teach it when it seems like less than 10% of postings are looking for it? And we're back to the discussion of what is the point of a University CS education. I would argue that learning something like C++ is important for the same reason something like Lisp or Haskell is important. Not because it will necessarily help you get a job, but because it introduces you to new concepts and a new way of thinking about pro…

I don't think there are any main concepts that I learned in C++ that weren't also covered in other courses, such as Java, assembly, and COBOL. If we're going to teach different types of languages then they should be truly different, such as the ones just mentioned.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#79

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

BoxFour wrote: post #51
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 measu…

I maintain it is patently silly to use any definition of underemployment that can expand to include a full-time quantitative trader on Jane Street, even theoretically, but I respect your commitment to the bit.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#80

Post by msgodel »

giantg2 wrote: post #49
msgodel wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The first real language I learned was C++ and I was decent at it (best in class but mostly stuck with console based programs, nothing advanced like GUIs that year). I have never used it at work. If you look at job boards, it's overwhelmingly stuff like Java, JS/TS frameworks, etc. Why teach it when it seems like less than 10% of postings are looking for it? Might as well teach other languages and just learn it if you…

Frameworks are the opposite of what universities should be teaching. I had this argument with another classmate when I was there who said they should be doing that. The point of a university is to give students the skills to communicate the ideas needed to use and develop frameworks effectively, not to teach you particular frameworks.
Post reply on HN