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Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

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Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#161

Post by Netcob »

momento wrote: post #124
donatj wrote: post #49

I don’t hear much about it these days, but circa 2004 when I was going into computer science I had multiple teachers and a guidance counselor warn me that all the jobs would be going to India and tell me I should pursue something else. This seemed to be very much the prevailing wisdom of the time. I pursued it anyway as it was my passion. I was one of five students in my program that had been a huge multi-campus prog…

My father was very strongly against my decision to get into web development (2012) and he echoed this sentiment heavily. I distinctly remember him yelling at me as a teenager; "you'll be living under a bridge in 5 years if you do this! India has this market!". He eventually kicked me out for not listening, forcing me to to borrow money from a friend to pay tuition in my final semester. Needless to say he was complete…

Kudos for sticking to it, I'm not sure I could have done that in your place! I'm always horrified at stories of parents who act this way. "Do it because I say so, I'm infallible as far as you are concerned, if you disobey me I'll hurt you."

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#162

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

donatj wrote: post #49

I don’t hear much about it these days, but circa 2004 when I was going into computer science I had multiple teachers and a guidance counselor warn me that all the jobs would be going to India and tell me I should pursue something else. This seemed to be very much the prevailing wisdom of the time. I pursued it anyway as it was my passion. I was one of five students in my program that had been a huge multi-campus prog…

I started university in 2000 in Spain, and I remember at that particular point in time studying computer science wasn't seen as desirable. When people had that interest, parents typically pushed them children to study telecommunications engineering instead. It was the fad at the time: they were all employed, had a strong lobby and made a lot of money.

It didn't last much, by the time I graduated from computer science everyone in computer science had a decent job (not paying a lot, but enough for a living) while telecommunications engineers were out of job in their specific field and mostly taking second picks in the CS job market. And to my knowledge, it has been mostly like that since then.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#163

Post by blooalien »

sersi wrote: post #140
hellbannedguy wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ageism. Sorry for being so blunt, but I know to many people who were just uninteresting to human resourses after hitting 45-50. I know more than a few homeless people in my life, and over half were once Programmers. It makes me sick. I do know this, if you are in tech, save up that money. (I have never understood this industry's way of hiring. Long drawn out interviews, and candidates whom are just average that…

As someone who's been in charge of recruitment, I've made an effort in hiring people who are less likely to get a chance at other places (minorities, older candidates) One thing that stood out to me though is that a lot of the older candidates I interviewed that had been struggling had deep knowledge of a technology that's no longer used and had had very little interest during their career in learning new things outs…

> … "if you want to keep a career as a software developer past 40 without going into management then you need to do side projects,you need to keep up to date with some of the latest fad (even if some of those fads are cyclical and recycle concepts from 20 years ago). Doing a job well and becoming an expert in an obsolete technology is no path to career growth."

Sad thing about this is that some of us (like me for one example) have known this since the days before personal computers were even a thing, but it don't really help to stay on top of modern tech when all the people in charge of hiring in the tech industry are twenty-somethings who automatically instantly hate anyone with even a single gray hair or wrinkle visible, and instantly dismiss a lifetime of knowledge based entirely on ageism.

Even sadder is that the "decision makers" in many tech jobs still to this day actively ignore good advice that people like me have been giving since the early days re; things like network security being more important than they want to admit to themselves (just to name a simple and obvious example), and then when their ignorance of such issues come back to bite them in the ass they always scapegoat the "new guy" somehow and out he goes.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#164

Post by DonHopkins »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #126
donatj wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The industry hadn’t yet recovered from the whole dot com thing You are completely right about that and that slipped my mind. Either way it was kind of nice how easy it was to get a job back then. Getting my foot in the door was a little difficult actually, but once I had some thing on my résumé I got an interview for basically every job I applied to. My résumé is much more impressive these days, and it may be in pa…

It's ageism. Sorry for being so blunt, but I know to many people who were just uninteresting to human resourses after hitting 45-50. I know more than a few homeless people in my life, and over half were once Programmers. It makes me sick. I do know this, if you are in tech, save up that money. (I have never understood this industry's way of hiring. Long drawn out interviews, and candidates whom are just average that…

In the Netherlands, permanent employment contracts are much harder for companies to break than in the US, so they often hire new people as consultants or temporary employees for a few months, then offer them a permanent contract if they work out.

It worked out well for me at TomTom: I kicked ass during the 3 month probationary period as a contractor, then when they decided to offer me a full time contract, I was in a very good position to negotiate a salary (and even a hiring bonus), much better than if they were hiring me cold out of the blue.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#165

Post by novok »

raverbashing wrote: post #85
gumby wrote: post #36

I moved to Palo Alto in 1984 after the tech boom had collapsed. All the mortgages were under water. People talked about how exciting it had been. “But how many disk drives will companies ever want, really?” In 1982 the MIT EECS department was trying to encourage students to pick other majors.* By ‘84 they didn’t need to. * posters in the Infinite Corridor that read, “Course 6 got you down? Change majors!”

But if you could see through the hype and bought one of the houses in PA for cheap today you would have been set for life.

You'd be even more set for life you bought bitcoin and HODL for a decade when there was only CPU mining too. It's all relative.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#166

Post by flomo »

adamauckland wrote: post #137
zozbot234 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the math. They really were that expensive in today's money. Of course you had cheaper alternatives for the home like the C64 and even more so the ZX Spectrum, but that flimsy toy would still set you back several hundred dollars in inflation-adjusted prices.

Amiga was £399 in 1989 in the UK, which is about £1000 in today's money. I expect they were cheaper in the US, but £1000 is fairly reasonable for a computer.

Good deal from a company obviously swirling around the bowl who sold computers through the mall ninja store. Great games! Meanwhile, their university presence was just about nil.

If you weren't a gamer, you probably didn't know Amiga existed.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#167

Post by raducu »

zozbot234 wrote: post #117
chii wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the decision makers that are convinced GUI data engineering tools are the future. The same train of thought leads to the idea that you can produce good software with mediocre developers by using processes, coding rules and checklists and "development methodology" like agile.

To be fair, Agile is not about leveraging mediocre developers - it's about enabling a handful of your best, most experienced hackers and architects (the fabled "two-pizzas team") to work under the best possible conditions, because the proponents of Agile had internalized the lesson that trying to scale up large teams of mediocre devs is a fool's errand.

Agile is what managers make it to be. To A LOT OF THEM it is about not doing any planning, writing zero specifications, using vague language for requirements, comparing performance of apples and oranges, "self-help"/motivational, justification to pressure those below and not bother with those above and so on and on.

But to most, it is just putting lipstick on the same old pig.

Did I mention the whole training, coaches and lango flinging industry?

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#168

Post by nabla9 »

lordnacho wrote: post #64

My biggest issue with education is the whole "study this, get a job doing that" idea. It's plainly wrong, and it sucks in people who drink the koolaid and think there's an easy route to work. Very little is learned in college that is necessary for general employment. By general I mean just about everything that isn't licensed, like being a doctor. What college does is it throws a bunch of hard but irrelevant subjects…

It can be all summed into reading, writing, math, and some grit.

Among US college graduates only a minority can demonstrate literacy proficiency. Roughly half demonstrate intermediate skills. Then there is 10-15 percent who are "below basic" (the educational system failed them). Many other countries have similar problems with their education.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#169

Post by whizzter »

IQunder130 wrote: post #115
quickthrower2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah 2001! 6 months and dozens of applications to get a job offer. I would have done 100s of applications had their been that many to apply to. Low points was being rejected from a job maintaining access databases in a small town. Being rejected from another job because I hadn’t suggested manually unrolling a loop as an alternative solution to a problem and I said “oh yeah you could do that I guess” (feedback: bad…

>6 months and dozens of applications to get a job offer. I honestly can't tell if this is supposed to be good or bad. Graduated in 2020 and spent over a year looking for work with several hundred applications sent. Ended up enrolling in a masters because of it, only got a job last month.

Back in those days developers were still doing most of the hiring decisions so with a sanely looking resume you could get an interview and if you could pass for knowing programming you could get a job (apart from in the post-dotcom bust and 2008 when firms just didn't hire).

At some point during the 20 years since, orgs decided that HR was to handle hiring. HR trying to add value by having the BEST candidate in their mind and decides that nice-to-haves are promoted to requirements, anyone over 55 (because they would not stay long enough, even while younger ones change jobs within 2 years) is culled as is anyone with less than 5 years of experience (unless possibly if you're below 25).

Then orgs go around complaining that it's hard to recruit people, Go figure.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#170

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

hughrr wrote: post #149
momento wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father was very strongly against my decision to get into web development (2012) and he echoed this sentiment heavily. I distinctly remember him yelling at me as a teenager; "you'll be living under a bridge in 5 years if you do this! India has this market!". He eventually kicked me out for not listening, forcing me to to borrow money from a friend to pay tuition in my final semester. Needless to say he was complete…

If there’s anything I’ve learned it is that you should always make your own mistakes. Your parent’s mistakes don’t even make sense any more 30-40 years down the line. My father pushed me into EE. I burned 5 years in industry being paid crap and then discovered it was actually a fairly low paying profession in the UK. Ended up supporting a bunch of Sun machines for other EEs which was more fun. So i learned Perl one w…

When offering PhD studentship positions, I have had several cases of people from developing countries who wanted to come work in my group, but didn't, and the reason (from their own accounts) was that their parents wouldn't let them go get their PhD anywhere not in the US.

They ended up at groups in the US with much worse scientific output than mine (it's true that well-known US universities wipe the floor with mine in every metric, but that's not true when you go down to the level of individual groups, labs or fields of research), while working unpaid while I was paying a decent salary.

They were bright people so I think and hope they'll have fruitful careers, but their parents (with their best intentions, I'm sure) surely put a roadblock in front of them due to the prejudice that there are no good opportunities outside the US.

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