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The computer science degree isn’t dead

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Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#121

Post by mc32 »

anal_reactor wrote: post #109
mc32 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

immigrants are people who tend to stay and don’t have plans to return to their home countries. Expats are temporary immigrants typically paid by their company to move and intend to move back to their home countries once the assignment is over.

Ain't nobody calling seasonal minimum-wage workers "expats".

True, but I'm talking about native English speakers. Those people likely have their own terminology in their own language to describe themselves.

Also an ex-patriate is typically in the professional class. So those "English" teachers who teach in Japan, etc., may think of themselves as ex-pats or try to frequent "ex-pat" hangouts but they aren't necessarily because of two things: one, they have not been working at their home office and then transferred and typically they do not hold prelesional degrees -though they may hold "certificates" or whatever. They are in effect temporary workers on a limited stay visa, often needing annual renewal by hopping to a third country to have it renewed themselves. For ex-pats all this or arranged by their employers.

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#122

Post by strken »

rockskon wrote: post #51
strken wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a self-solving problem, though. At that point, every remaining senior+ engineer will be paid a bajillion dollars (like they are now) and companies will start to invest in actual training.

That worked so well for the finance system finding new Cobol programmers!

I am not convinced the finance system is struggling to find Cobol programmers. They certainly don't seem willing to pay them more on job listings.

When you read an article about a "skills shortage" it's usually more of a pay shortage and/or a terrible working conditions overage.

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#123

Post by bossyTeacher »

Saying X is dead, it is still possible with the one right approach, suggests to me that X is effectively dead as far as the mainstream is concerned.

Blacksmithing as a profession isn't dead either, it is still possible with the right approach. Just don't expect knights to come knocking asking you to make them the next Excalibur.

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#124

Post by JCTheDenthog »

dyauspitr wrote: post #49
JCTheDenthog wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're going to see a big scramble to pick up the pieces in a few years when a bunch of vibe-slopped houses of cards come crashing down. I imagine it will be like the demand for COBOL developers but on a much more massive scale.

You know that’s not going to happen. Most of us are past the denial stage now, come join us…

Then why did it take Anthropic over a year just to fix the flickering issue in one of their main products when they have internal access to the latest and greatest models?

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#125

Post by somenameforme »

stephbook wrote: post #36
taurath wrote: post #19

If 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…

Shouldn't a bad job market convince people to get a degree? You only miss a bad job market entry and low salaries, you need every meagre advantage you can get. 100% agree on a degree being a strong signal, by the way.

If we're speaking realistically and not idealistically, then the primary point of a degree is as an investment in a job market. You go deep in debt with the aim of getting many times what you invest in return. But in the case of a bad job market, you're investing serious money (especially in modern times) for what may not ultimately pay off. And even if LLMs don't reach their viable potential, they're still likely going to significantly depress wages/employment for many forms of knowledge work, making a degree even less valuable.

I went to a top 10 university, but won't be encouraging my children to go to university at all, nor will I strongly discourage them. But I will make it clear that it is a choice with pros and cons, and in modern times I personally think that the cons outweigh the pros. Of course if they want to do some form of engineering then it will probably be necessary, but there's lots of wild careers like underwater welding that make big $$$, are fun/physical, highly skilled, and you get paid to learn instead of going 6 figures in debt before you even enter the job market. And it's something that will always be needed, everywhere, and isn't going anywhere.

And the reality of life is, like the article says - where you start is not where you end. Once you get your foot in the door pretty much anywhere, your formal title often quickly becomes much less relevant than the skills you have.

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#126

Post by yieldcrv »

anal_reactor wrote: post #33
ehnto wrote: post #23

Earlier 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…

Honestly I do the reverse of that. I dress like shit and when introducing myself I specifically use the word "immigrant" rather than "expat" because signalling high social position attracts people who want something from me but don't offer anything in return.

Not to this extreme but most people around me don’t know what I do for money or explore in unallocated time

I’m fashionable and have a nice place but nothing says “software engineer that earns more than most doctors”

People that wake up next to me think I earn about 1/3rd to 1/5th of what I earn, I don’t correct them

But at the same time I do want just a little bit of the hypergamy. Unfortunately, broadcasting to that sentiment seems incompatible with staying low key and attracting more collaborative people, but it could be fun which is my goal. I’ve seen how doctors are treated in the attraction game, its strange and downright scary to see some people code switch around them to be seen as eligible mates, I could have that. I’ve been analyzing it and it has very little to do with perceived utility, and almost solely to do with perceived earning potential combined with the idea of other people wanting them.

When I’ve spent extended time in small towns I inherit that treatment. In small towns across the US, you have people aspiring to hook up with entry level military conscripts because “they make so much money”. When you earn an entire order of magnitude more than that, it’s almost impossible to blend in and people can tell, so you get the code switching hypergamy sentiment.

This is the closest parallel to what people are talking about in this thread, because I’m rarely networking. Recruiters reach out to me over email and linkedin and thats it. Do work, get paid, sign off.

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#127

Post by aatd86 »

rienbdj wrote: post #91
aatd86 wrote: post #87

Computer Science is still useful. It is software development that is made trivial now that software can write software.

Not many people are employed as computer scientists (they are mostly academics) compared to SWEs.

I was making the difference between engineering and development too actually. Building react and using react being an illustration of the difference between an engineer and a dev. It is a spectrum however, that's true.

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#128

Post by lucianbr »

0xpgm wrote: post #116

Hypothetically if LLMs were possible in the early 90s, what would the software ecosystem look like today? Would it be 80s technology everywhere but widely deployed? Or would things have advanced further - better compilers, more ergonomic languages, better platforms etc? I don't know. But I suspect we'd still have needed people studying computer science to advance the state of the art. Now looking forward 30-40 years…

> better compilers, more ergonomic languages

If anything it seems wide deployment of LLMs would go against this. When nobody writes code by hand anymore, who will care about the ergonomics of programming languages? And even if a few do care, how would you get adoption? I expect everyone will just use whatever is already used most.

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#129

Post by Madmallard »

taurath wrote: post #19

If 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…

As someone who got a Comp Sci degree from a good school and who worked at FAANG right out of school, it seems like this is all that matters to companies looking to hire me.

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#130

Post by bArray »

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 smart glasses with built in LLMs, this is becoming more and more problematic. Anything not run under strict conditions is entirely untrustworthy.

Management is slow to catch-up or react and the lecturers running these degree courses are under significant pressure to increase the results. I'm aware that many are doing class-wide weighted adjustments just to keep the numbers of passing students up. The quality of students graduating with CS degrees is declining rapidly.

[1] https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/academics/failing-grade...

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