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Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates
111–120 of 130 posts
Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anecdotally, but talking to a lot of people who really have their ears to the ground, the junior roles thing seems to be very real. It probably isn't just AI--with more senior folks probably more available, why hire juniors--but seems to be pretty pronounced (with probably the corollary that bootcamps are probably a bad idea these days). Which isn't a great trend if real.
Five years ago, maybe even two years ago, we were hearing a lot about "age discrimination" and how seniors couldn't get hired. Maybe it's just a phase? Or maybe today's juniors are different than the juniors were five years ago. And maybe that's because of AI.
Both things can be true. It can be tough for juniors and tough for seniors who haven’t kept up and are just trying to cruise. Not that age discrimination isn’t a thing.
Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates
#113Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
> […] 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…
Being able to understand computer science and apply it is called software ENGINEERING for a reason, and it's a lot more complicated than 'just programming'. You sound like a physicist who thinks mechanical engineers are unnecessary because we have physicists and car mechanics.
> You sound like a physicist who thinks mechanical engineers are unnecessary because we have physicists and car mechanics.
Or I sound like someone who recognizes that physics and computer science, and mechanical engineering and computer engineering / programming, are different areas of activity.
Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
The short of it is that the team just wants high throughput but doesn't care about improving the system health or process efficiency. I tend to consider multiple aspects of the work including those areas. But if you just want someone to turn out tickets, I tend to be slower unless the task is simple or repetitive. I have a disability and graying hair, so my options are limited. I'm going to fail my PIP later this mon…
Hm, I see. Do you use a coding assistant? Do you see value in keeping up or your morale is diminishing? Can you change teams or positions or focus?
I use Copilot, but it isn't that helpful. There is no morale - I'm so burnt out I fantasize about getting hit by a bus. No team will touch me on a PIP.
Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Of course you can teach most concepts in most languages, but when it comes to understanding concepts like stack vs heap, pointers to a value vs the value itself, move vs copy semantics, pass by reference vs pass by value, explicit vs implicit memory allocation and deallocation, and so on, I found C++ pretty useful.
Sure, and those are pretty much all things you learn in assembly with the added benefit of understanding the structure (registers).
Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates
#117There's so many graduates that are not worth the paper their degree is printed on that it's laughable (if it weren't sad).
That's a good part of the reason why hiring processes are so long and you need to re-check everything people are supposed to know. Filtering out hundreds of candidates to get a mediocre one at best, thousands to get a really good one.
There are job openings, but just having a piece of paper is not enough to get to those.
AI tools have made recruiting a miserable experience for everyone involved, there's so much cheating in applicants and you waste so much time filtering those out and sadly, good candidates sometimes get lost in the noise.
Networking is what has the highest signal to noise ratio. A good recommendation from someone you trust helps a lot, but it penalizes people just starting their careers and have smaller networks.
It's a sad state of affairs.
Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates
#118Earlier 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 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. Python's ecosystem is massive and there are lots of use cases[0], basically data analysis, machine learning, deep learning and all the rest of AI run on Python. [0] https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/keep-bbsk/AFgXFlJPnxraSopK...
Image that I shared was from my Google Keep account and apparently it was set private afterwards by Google so don't click the link....here is the alternative link: https://media.springernature.com/full/springer-static/image/...
Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
When education becomes a business students become your customers. And the last thing you want to do is piss off your customers by failing them.
But if you can sell those customers a better product at the same price, then perhaps everybody will be happier. As it is now no one is happy. CS staff are annoyed that the students don't want to learn CS, and the students are annoyed since most of the CS they are forced to learning isn't relevant for the web developer job they want to apply after graduation.
There's an argument that a huge amount of the specific engineering theory that students learn never gets applied in a lot of jobs. I used some for a few years in mechanical engineering but not really a whole lot. A lot more was sense in managing projects. And, while I took a programming course (wouldn't call is CS), it probably didn't really help me in my job a lot more than the limited programming I took in high school did.
Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates
#120Earlier 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 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 hear…
I took the MIT MOOC CS Intro a few years back for a combination of refresher (though I wasn't actually a CS major) and just to kick the tires. Good Lord, that would have kicked my butt back when I was a freshman absent prior programming experience, admittedly when computer programming was much less a norm than it is today.
I had a high school BASIC class but that was about it.