Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

Note that my degree is from a well-reputed Canadian school that has a "software engineering specialization", and as far as I can tell (though I did not take it) that specialization is indistinguishable from the main CS curriculum, and is not valid vocational training.

Secondly, universities are not meant to prepare you for a better salary or job. They are meant to give you a particular set of skills and knowledge from a field of work. Finishing means that you usually get access to a certain community with the same specialty. This is useful if you want to keep up to date with your field or publish new findings.

Software companies that require computer scientists usually are just full of it and they forget that there are other universities that prepare people for software engineering or even just programming. You could argue that a course or bootcamp is enough. But we already know they ask for too much when you look at the requirements they have. They aim for the best and then take what they are given.

I think universities are too easy nowadays to let people in. During my father's time, there were around 10 slots for the arts university in my country each year. All of them ended being praised artists. Actually, national news are made when each one of them pass away.

Now, universities just take everyone, especially if they pay for a slot. This caused a shift into perspective. You are no longer hard-working or lucky to get into a university, you are now expected to get into one to prove you are not a complete moron.

This is the actual problem, and it is reflected in your arguments. I agree, you probably didn't need to go to university. Hell, I know that I didn't need to go through mine. However, we were both expected to, and for no good reason.

Case in point - I'm a generalist who can very credibly claim very significant expertise at two disconnected areas (compilers and distributed systems), plus some startup/ product management expertise. I saw a job listing here for a startup that needed both of these and claimed they're looking for remote work - so, even though I'm not actively looking for a job, I wrote them; the match between my skills and their needs seemed too good to be true.

They wrote back the standard rejection mail - didn't even try to talk to me. I thought that maybe they found someone else, but no, they still advertise the position. I know it sounds arrogant, but there's no chance in hell they can find many better candidates (I doubt that they can find even one, but well, good luck).

Are their recruiters uniquely ignorant? Unlikely. I think many companies do a lousy effort on recruiting, and then wonder why they can't fill the positions. One of the reasons "internal referrals" work so well is that the candidates are at least seriously considered.

"I consider computer science to be the art and science of exploiting automatic digital computers, and of creating the technology necessary to understand their use. It deals with such related problems as the design of better machines using known components, the design and implementation of adequate software systems for communication between man and machine, and the design and analysis of methods of representing information by abstract symbols and of processes for manipulating these symbols. Computer science must also concern itself with such theoretical subjects supporting this technology as information theory, the logic of the finitely constructable, numerical mathematical analysis, and the psychology of problem solving. Naturally, these theoretical subjects are shared by computer science with such disciplines as philosophy, mathematics, and psychology."

http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/cs/tr/65/26/CS-TR-65-...