Big Tech is getting cozy with computer science departments
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Big Tech is getting cozy with computer science departments
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Re: Big Tech is getting cozy with computer science departments
#2This is all wrong. The purpose of Universities is to uphold, expand and disseminate human culture, not to prepare people for a career in the industry. Big tech should not be allowed to piggyback on the reputation of educational institutions to push their products and the latest fads at the expense of the fundamentals.
Re: Big Tech is getting cozy with computer science departments
#3Given the hiring practices in FAANG where you are expected to present academic background rather than practical engineering skills, I'd say this is not a new phenomenon.
Re: Big Tech is getting cozy with computer science departments
#4This is all wrong. The purpose of Universities is to uphold, expand and disseminate human culture, not to prepare people for a career in the industry. Big tech should not be allowed to piggyback on the reputation of educational institutions to push their products and the latest fads at the expense of the fundamentals.
Big tech is already choosing most of what you watch on your screens.
For example if Google decides that something doesn't exist, 90+% of connected people won't see it.
This is scary.
Re: Big Tech is getting cozy with computer science departments
#5This is all wrong. The purpose of Universities is to uphold, expand and disseminate human culture, not to prepare people for a career in the industry. Big tech should not be allowed to piggyback on the reputation of educational institutions to push their products and the latest fads at the expense of the fundamentals.
>>The purpose of Universities is to uphold, expand and disseminate human culture, not to prepare people for a career in the industry.
Like, I personally agree with you, but then I also think that we don't have the right to define it as such. There's plenty of people who think that the main goal of a university(at least in scientific/engineering fields) should be to prepare people for working in the industry.
Equally, I see nothing wrong with courses which are specifically designed for this. I myself have finished a "Games Engineering" masters which boasted about close links to the industry, and over 90% hire rate in the industry after - and I got exactly what was promised. I don't see any issue with that personally. I also have friends who had their entire PhDs funded by companies like Red Hat, because they were researching things done in collaboration with them. Also don't have any issue here, and that made sure that my friends not only paid nothing for their PhDs, they were actually pretty well compensated throughout.
I think the perspective changes when you have to pay for university. My sister has a degree in film making from a British university, which she paid nealy £60k(!!!!) for, and her chances of employment in the industry are nearly zero. Where I'm from(Poland)_all higher education is free, and then I have no problem with degrees not correlating with employment(but then maybe on the other hand, as a Polish tax payer, maybe I would prefer that they did, otherwise why are we paying these people to study with no employment prospects afterwards. Again, I don't really think that but I know many people do).
Re: Big Tech is getting cozy with computer science departments
#6This is all wrong. The purpose of Universities is to uphold, expand and disseminate human culture, not to prepare people for a career in the industry. Big tech should not be allowed to piggyback on the reputation of educational institutions to push their products and the latest fads at the expense of the fundamentals.
Uhh, this has been happening for over 25 years now.
One of the reasons is there are just too many students. How this came to be is another rabbithole though.
Re: Big Tech is getting cozy with computer science departments
#7This is the preferred way to fix the “pipeline problem” for more inclusion
Recruit directly at a broader range of schools and make the curriculum more relevant
Big Tech largely ignores Tier 2 and Tier 3 schools for on campus recruiting, while imagining that the intelligence community has better developers (which does recruit from tier 2 and tier 3 schools on campus)
Since neither of them have figured out how to screen for competent or trainable developers better its clear big tech should be expanding how they recruit. Desirable because big tech is the one with the inclusion problem and pays better.
Re: Big Tech is getting cozy with computer science departments
#8This is all wrong. The purpose of Universities is to uphold, expand and disseminate human culture, not to prepare people for a career in the industry. Big tech should not be allowed to piggyback on the reputation of educational institutions to push their products and the latest fads at the expense of the fundamentals.
I would argue that universities have two tasks:
1. Do research to expand knowledge.
2. Educate new researchers.
Big tech just wants highly skilled researchers in their workforce, but there only N students graduating every year. So it is only logical for them to "help" (can be good or bad) the university so n+m students graduate. But the bad thing is that the push for more education can negativly impact the available research time professors have.
Re: Big Tech is getting cozy with computer science departments
#9This is the preferred way to fix the “pipeline problem” for more inclusion Recruit directly at a broader range of schools and make the curriculum more relevant Big Tech largely ignores Tier 2 and Tier 3 schools for on campus recruiting, while imagining that the intelligence community has better developers (which does recruit from tier 2 and tier 3 schools on campus) Since neither of them have figured out how to scree…
> Big Tech largely ignores Tier 2 and Tier 3 schools for on campus recruiting, while imagining that the intelligence community has better developers
I don't think the general consensus is that intelligence organizations have better developers than big tech. I think the rule of thumb is the better the pay, the better the quality.
Re: Big Tech is getting cozy with computer science departments
#10This is all wrong. The purpose of Universities is to uphold, expand and disseminate human culture, not to prepare people for a career in the industry. Big tech should not be allowed to piggyback on the reputation of educational institutions to push their products and the latest fads at the expense of the fundamentals.
>>The purpose of Universities is to uphold, expand and disseminate human culture, not to prepare people for a career in the industry. Like, I personally agree with you, but then I also think that we don't have the right to define it as such. There's plenty of people who think that the main goal of a university(at least in scientific/engineering fields) should be to prepare people for working in the industry. Equally,…
> should be to prepare people for working in the industry.
There used to be a system of education here in the UK called vocational colleges (or sometimes courses) where you would do exactly this, prepare for work in the industry - and industry would be involved in helping shape the curriculum, giving students work experience etc.
This has fallen out of favour a lot, it still exists for trades activities like plumbing, electrician, bricklaying/building etc. but you won't find a software engineering course