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The computer science degree isn’t dead

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#191

Post by musicale »

thr0w wrote: post #142
jongjong wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes 100%. I was born upper middle class. I have a BIT from a global top 50 University. I understood this after working in cryptocurrency sector in Germany. After I left Australia and moved to Europe, I realized after some time that 'the matrix' had demoted me into a lower social class. I had to work harder for less money and had access to fewer opportunities. Then I joined the crypto sector and the people there seeme…

> Nowadays carriages are split between 'normal' and 'quiet'... And the number of quiet carriages seems to have increased over time... It's like there are forces in society which try to prevent people with different experiences from sharing their experiences. In the USA at least, people in the normal cars aren't "sharing their experiences". They're playing garbage music from their iPhone speakers (technically not allo…

100%* prefer almost anything to sodcasting, facetime calls, and tiktok/youtube/mobile games at max volume

*rounded up

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#192

Post by musicale »

deadbabe wrote: post #147
le-mark wrote: post #2

> 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…

I had a frank conversation with a hiring manager about it. What he said was even if we hire juniors, juniors using AI are never going to rise to the level of our current seniors who built decades of experience without AI. So basically, today’s juniors are not worth investing in. Until society really sorts itself out with responsibile AI usage in a way that still develops independent professional skills, there is no p…

> juniors using AI are never going to rise to the level of our current seniors who built decades of experience without AI

this does not seem to be an argument for requiring junior employees to focus on using AI tools

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#193

Post by vanuatu »

LtWorf wrote: post #53
vanuatu wrote: post #40

Im quite bullish on CS degrees, they equip you with a network and the general "vibe" of being in a common environment with other smart passionate kids that push you to challenge yourself also right now nothing is higher signal than a new grad who built a product with actual paying users

> who built a product with actual paying users How could this possibly signal competence? I think it just signals capital and free time.

what do you mean? we're hiring new grads because we think they will make the company money. most of our hires are from top schools so they're already proven to be smart

right now most resumes are zero signal because any new grad can whip up an impressive sounding project using ai with zero paying users. but knowing what to build, having good product sense and taste, talking to customers, iterating and not giving up are much more desirable skills

youd be surprised how many new grads with capital and free time have zero business skills

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#194

Post by vanuatu »

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm wrote: post #77
vanuatu wrote: post #40

Im quite bullish on CS degrees, they equip you with a network and the general "vibe" of being in a common environment with other smart passionate kids that push you to challenge yourself also right now nothing is higher signal than a new grad who built a product with actual paying users

Ironic. I did both a humanities and a CS degree. The CS degree was filled with either south asian internationals or people who just want to make money. The rest were antisocial dudes. Humanities however was filled with young social women. The experiences I got from the latter was a huge ego and confidence boost.

highly dependant on school ofc

i went to a top cs school and loved it, it raised the ceiling of what i thought was even possible, coming from a country where cs was not seen as an interesting or desirable job at the time

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#196

Post by musicale »

senderista wrote: post #45
zerobees wrote: post #14

My impression is that in the past year or so, IEEE journals have been leaning pretty heavily into low-quality, AI-generated articles. And looks like this author produced not one, not two, but three career advice columns in a single day - impressive: https://spectrum.ieee.org/u/brian-jenney

IEEE has been putting their name on garbage journals and conferences since forever.

This is unfortunately true. There are tons of IEEE spamferences. Which is a shame because there are also good IEEE-sponsored (or co-sponsored) conferences (I find ISCA, Hot Chips + Hot Interconnects, and SC to all be interesting systems conferences, for example.)

However IEEE Spectrum is neither a journal nor a conference - it's the flagship magazine of the IEEE.

My impression of IEEE Spectrum (as well as CACM) is that they still feature good technical papers and content written by domain experts, but they also feature junk/filler "articles" and blog posts written by serial contributors who seem to optimize article quantity over quality. Often the title or topic is the only good part.

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#197

Post by vanuatu »

keiferski wrote: post #60
LtWorf wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who built a product with actual paying users How could this possibly signal competence? I think it just signals capital and free time.

There is a weird assumption nowadays that “making money = you’re an expert and know what you’re doing.” The best X is the one that makes the most cash, full stop. Very scary for the future, unfortunately.

hmm i dont think any new grad is an expert and knows what they're doing (if im understanding you right)

but the skills we used to look for in new grads are shifting as coding agents make execution easy, a new grad with good business sense is really valuable

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#198

Post by camdenreslink »

bArray wrote: post #130

This article tackles the issue from a job opportunity perspective, but a bigger problem is the quality of students completing CS degrees is declining. UC Berkley are seeing it in their STEM departments [1] and I have seen the raw data for other Universities delivering CS degrees that is unpublished. Currently the only method to stop students from cheating is to run strictly controlled paper-based exams, and with smar…

> many are doing class-wide weighted adjustments

Isn't this just grading on a curve, which has been done probably as long as universities have existed? The key is the instructor making sure a high standard is met (which seems to be the crux of the issue).

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#200

Post by vanuatu »

deadbabe wrote: post #147
le-mark wrote: post #2

> 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…

I had a frank conversation with a hiring manager about it. What he said was even if we hire juniors, juniors using AI are never going to rise to the level of our current seniors who built decades of experience without AI. So basically, today’s juniors are not worth investing in. Until society really sorts itself out with responsibile AI usage in a way that still develops independent professional skills, there is no p…

thats interesting, the HMs where I work love hiring juniors (who pass the bar) because they are so AI-native

the more experienced engineers can help with setting guardrails and mentorship, but the juniors come unconstrained by priors on how to use ai in creative ways to solve all sorts of business problems.

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