Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

newsweek.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 130 posts

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#21

Post by Maro »

felixarba wrote: post #8

> Every kid with a laptop thinks they're the next Zuckerberg, but most can't debug their way out of a paper bag I feel like I've seen this quote many times over the years. Also, how do they calculate employment rate? If you get a job at McDonald's while having a civil engineering degree or nutrition science, that counts as employed as well, no? Would be good to see how many are actually employed in their field of stu…

> If you get a job at McDonald's while having a civil engineering degree

That would be under_employment (vs un_employment).

Un_employment refers to people actively seeking work but unable to find it, while under_employment encompasses individuals who are working but not fully utilizing their skills or working fewer hours than they would like

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#24

Post by vertnerd »

I left the software engineering field about 17 years ago to become a high school teacher. One of the things I taught was computer science (to high schoolers) and I recall sitting in many meetings of HS CS educators discussing the upcoming critical shortage of workers with CS degrees. I would tell them I left the field because there wasn't much work, and they would look at me like I was crazy. "Something wrong with that guy... He can't find work when there's a CRITICAL SHORTAGE of workers!!"

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#25

Post by ghaff »

zettapwn wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Anecdotally, but talking to a lot of people who really have their ears to the ground, the junior roles thing seems to be very real. It probably isn't just AI--with more senior folks probably more available, why hire juniors--but seems to be pretty pronounced (with probably the corollary that bootcamps are probably a bad idea these days). Which isn't a great trend if real.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#26

Post by Maro »

cs_throwaway wrote: post #3

CS professor with 15 years experience. The massive boom in computer science enrollment over the last 20 years has been driven mostly by people chasing tech salaries, not by any real interest in computing itself. These students often show up completely unprepared for how difficult CS actually is, and universities have responded by dumbing down their programs to keep everyone happy and enrolled. If this weeds out the p…

I started my degree in 1999, and already then this was already a factor. I hope more articles like this are published, and people who aren't really interested in computing stop choosing this path.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#27

Post by [deleted] »

dpflan wrote: post #20
ramesh31 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for saying this because it feels like these people entering the industry in such numbers over the 2010s completely killed what made this job fun in the first place. I call them "ticket completers". Sure they can mechanically perform the minimum requirements of the job, but there is zero interest at all in what is actually being done; just following PM directions to the letter with no further thought. The wh…

> The hackers and nerds will be just fine. They are like gold when we find them now. But if this makes CS "uncool" again, I am all for it. Think about how AI can help students cheat nowadays. You could still cheat previously, but now a CS-degree seeker can have an AI do the entirety of school work for them (with exception of say pen-and-paper tests). Imagine how the quality of new graduates drops with regard to the u…

[deleted]

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#28

Post by dagw »

zettapwn wrote: post #2

[flagged]

“Learn to code” ceases to be good advice if too many people do.

Completely disagree. No matter what job you end up with, you will almost certainly be able to do it a bit better if you know how to code. Knowing how to code is basically always a plus when applying for a job. However "just learn to code a little bit, and nothing else" is probably bad advice.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#29

Post by rvz »

zettapwn wrote: post #2

[flagged]

> 1. Overproduction. Even liberal arts colleges have 15-20% of students majoring in computer science. “Learn to code” ceases to be good advice if too many people do.

"Learn to code" was the scam to address the so-called "skills shortage" BS in programming. Even worse, the skills that was pushed were also the most automatable: HTML, CSS and especially Javascript just to get $250k roles which was the most unsustainable ZIRP era to happen.

Now you won't see the influencers screaming about web developer roles given the current massive flush in those who joined because of the $$$ just to rearrange a or adding accessiblity styling for 6 figures.

Re: Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

#30

Post by paxys »

cs_throwaway wrote: post #3

CS professor with 15 years experience. The massive boom in computer science enrollment over the last 20 years has been driven mostly by people chasing tech salaries, not by any real interest in computing itself. These students often show up completely unprepared for how difficult CS actually is, and universities have responded by dumbing down their programs to keep everyone happy and enrolled. If this weeds out the p…

Even 20 years ago back when I was in college you had a sizable portion of kids who came in to study computer science thinking it would be fun and games. They were then made to study formal logic in their first semester and debug segfaults in gdb in the next, and by the end of the first year pretty much all of them had switched majors.

Anecdotally I've heard that very few CS programs even use C++ anymore, and schools now favor Python because students find it more accessible.

Post reply on HN