A degree was never supposed to make someone instantly productive on day one. It was supposed to be paired with junior roles, mentoring, code review
The computer science degree isn’t dead
81–90 of 267 posts
Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead
#82If one is thinking about not getting a degree and trying to go straight to work, as someone who did so (albiet out of poverty rather than choice) but didn't end up like Zuck, please heed my warning: Social capital matters more than just about anyone who has a degree can understand and tell you or mentor you about, because the majority of them have always had it, and they tend not even to interact with people without…
To a much smaller extent due to where I live, I noticed this too. From merely the fact that I had a (local economy relative) high paying software job and that I could "make stuff happen" for people with capital or people in the "boys club", I was introduced to an entirely different layer of the city I had no idea about. I noticed how effortlessly the signals transfer and how it all feels very meritocratic, you don't…
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Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
To a much smaller extent due to where I live, I noticed this too. From merely the fact that I had a (local economy relative) high paying software job and that I could "make stuff happen" for people with capital or people in the "boys club", I was introduced to an entirely different layer of the city I had no idea about. I noticed how effortlessly the signals transfer and how it all feels very meritocratic, you don't…
what's an example of something you made happen
encrypted backup of media files which should become public in very specific circumstances
Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
To a much smaller extent due to where I live, I noticed this too. From merely the fact that I had a (local economy relative) high paying software job and that I could "make stuff happen" for people with capital or people in the "boys club", I was introduced to an entirely different layer of the city I had no idea about. I noticed how effortlessly the signals transfer and how it all feels very meritocratic, you don't…
what's an example of something you made happen
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Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead
#85If one is thinking about not getting a degree and trying to go straight to work, as someone who did so (albiet out of poverty rather than choice) but didn't end up like Zuck, please heed my warning: Social capital matters more than just about anyone who has a degree can understand and tell you or mentor you about, because the majority of them have always had it, and they tend not even to interact with people without…
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Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead
#86If you’re going to get a CS degree, do it in a master’s degree program. Get your undergraduate degree in anything else that involves at least some mathematics, I’d recommend physics, chemistry, molecular biology, planetary sciences - probability, calculus, linear algebra. Engineering is somewhat more on the vocational side, but that works too. Why? You don’t narrow your scope at the beginning!
Isn't it normal to study mathematics in a computer science bachelor program in USA? That country never ceases to astonish me lol.
I like how you don't know the answer but then just assume anyway lol
Guess the standards in your country for logic must be really low lol
Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead
#87Computer Science is still useful.
It is software development that is made trivial now that software can write software.
Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead
#88Learning can be done without a degree, but building connections and securing funding is difficult without one.
A degree simplifies the cognitive resources needed to gain trust. Normally, gaining trust requires a lot of time. As a freelancer, it took me two years of very low-income work and repeatedly taking small jobs before I got my first real contract, simply because I didn't have a good degree.
But if you have a degree, you can skip that starting line quickly. I've done over 400 small jobs—work for college students, professors, and business owners. 80% of those were won with the lowest bid. And because I took those low-bid jobs, I eventually landed fairly well-paying contracts (about 35 of them) where I even drafted the contracts myself.
Moreover, while they say you can learn without a degree, it's much harder.
Why? Because a degree provides guidance through a curriculum. When you're just starting out, you don't even know what you need to learn. You have to ask around and figure it out piece by piece. A degree, even if you don't study properly, at least gives you the keywords to search for. Without a degree, you don't even know what it is you're trying to do.
I don't have a computer science degree, nor did I attend a good university. That's why it took an enormous amount of time to generate income from computer-related work. And even then, the vast majority of jobs paid below minimum wage, if anything at all.
Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead
#89> The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently placed unemployment for recent CS graduates in the United States at 6.1 percent, with computer engineering graduates at 7.5 percent. Compared to philosophy majors at 3.2 percent and art history graduates at 3.0 percent, those figures look alarming. Alarming doesn’t begin to describe it. This is an existential crises for our industry. The situation for entry level has be…
Cut juniors for AI
Save money
Invest in market share
Increase market cap
Hire the last remaining seniors at higher rates but only where needed
Great time to be a shareholder or staff level engineer. For everyone else, the ladder has been pulled.
Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They'll just be far fewer than they used to be. I do tend to agree. Though at the current pace of change I don't know if we can take it for granted. As a recent example, I was on a chat with the two most experienced technical people in our company and the original developer of a feature trying to work out why we were getting a null pointer exception in a very specific case. Of course we had a fix, just a guard agai…
In your example you knew the issues with the original fix, had some ideas to the cause, even if they were wrong, and generally knew where to look. In my experience the LLM when given the ticket would have done the original null pointer guard fix given the bug. Only under direction does it ever dig deeper and for me it'll often go down some wrong paths unless I tell it to go somewhere else. It's great when it gets it…
Can’t sustain six figure salaries because current prompts are wrong.