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Why do so few people major in computer science?

danwang.co

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Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#81

Slight note about Dan Wang picking 2005: That was the peak of CS degrees awarded because it's 4/5 years after the height of the dot-com bubble. So the upward bump in the mid-2000's is somewhat explainable as an anomaly. I think his point 1 is underrated. CS degrees are flat because aptitude is flat. You can compare CS degrees to other degrees over time at nsf.gov: https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2016/nsb20161/#/report…

> The number of grads for difficult degrees and the quality of grads seems to be another story. This is why I never believed the "There is no STEM shortage" stories. They were mostly based on the assumption that all STEM grads were qualified to work in STEM. That's not true in any field where you can complete a degree with a C or D average. I find it unfortunate that some of the larger software companies filter out a…

>The companies have to have some sort of filtering mechanism

There's no one to hold companies accountable for having a unjustifiably high or low filter. And frankly I don't think anyone outside of CS has gotten those filters right any more than CS has. An incorrect filter turns into "Well, there's no one qualified to work for us" or "Well, all of these candidates failed to do the job" which leads to incorrect assumptions about the labor pool, which is what's going to bias your hiring decisions.

There are companies out there hiring for A+ students that would be just as well off with a C or D average student because what the company is doing day-to-day is too far from what university was like.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is also the only career which people try to inject diversity just for the sake of it. Maybe I just live in developer bubble and don't know any better, but I've never seen a movement like "Girls do Plumbing!", "Black girls construction bootcamp" or "Mining for equality!".

I've been pretty curious about this as well. Why aren't there more women on oil rigs? We try to add diversity, but it feels so manufactured. Society has evolved the games and roles we play. It will evolve further down the line as well. What is considered acceptable for men, women, westerners, easterners, low-income, high-income will all be noticeably different in 100 years. Culture adjusts with time, and we see that…

Off and on, I do contract work for oil companies and I can say with some certainty that it's a pretty hostile environment toward women.

Let me give some examples to see if I can build a picture. On the technology end of things, I used to go to the conference SEG, which a lot of deals for technology are made on the side. I've not been for the last 4-5 years, but they used to be really aggressive about their use of booth babes. For example, I remember one year where there was a vendor where I could get my shoes shined by a group of women wearing bikinis, cowboy boots, and cowboy hats while having the sales person talk to me about whatever widget they were selling. Similarly, a former coworker used to hire what were called "technical models" who were pretty women that could talk shop that they'd used to drive sales. Now, is this unique to oil? Nope. However, I felt they were pretty aggressive about it.

As far as oil rig work, that's interesting for a couple of reasons. One, roughnecking is one of the only fields left that pays extremely good money for limited amount of education. Two, most of the managers that I met did a certain amount of time working on rigs to cut their teeth and they very much viewed it as a rite of passage into upper management. I mention these two things because it turns out rig work is important both for providing wealth to those with little education as well as a path to upper management. Now, as a women, is this an inviting environment? Well, let's see; there are very few women doing it right now, so it's likely you'd be one of the only ones at the operation. Further, depending on the assignment, you could literally be trapped either in the middle of the desert or on an offshore rig with literally no where to go in case there was a conflict with the other personnel. Alternatively, you could take an assignment in a place like Saudi where you have to completely cover yourself and not drive whenever you're off compound. That sucks and every woman who enters the field knows that it sucks.

That said, would oil management be excited if a bunch of women wanted to do rig work? Absolutely. Each of the companies that I've worked with absolutely had outreach programs to attract women. However, it's hard because overall it's an extremely hostile environment. Further, it has a long term affect because the current oil culture encourages a certain amount of rig work to cut your teeth for management and if women aren't getting that then they're at a disadvantage for those positions as well.

What to do? Honestly, I don't know. Personally, I think there's a chicken and the egg problem. If there was magically a big cohort of women who wanted to get on a rig, I think many of the problems I mentioned above would be moderated. Though, certainly, disadvantages while working in the Middle East persist. However, it's unlikely that such a cohort will magically appear. Till then, part of the point of outreach programs is to create small, incremental improvement until these problems fix themselves.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#83
I think the problem is how the subject is taught. I remember my first CS class, and there was quite a bit of diversity that quickly disappeared after the first test when people started dropping the class. (I'm pretty sure something like half the class disappeared, and I don't think this is at all unusual). So why did all those people initially find interest, and then disappear?

I remember the way they taught it was VERY dogmatic Java/OOP. Putting aside my personal feelings on those subjects, that's like teaching someone to swim by throwing them in the ocean without a life jacket. I tutored some other students, and picking up the language AND the IDE and the debugger and understanding compilers -- it was too much. I remember trying to learn java as a kid and being baffled, and then picking up QBasic and basically getting it immediately. QBasic teaches you some awful habits of course, but for a beginner it's much easier to reason about and it will teach you how to think like a computer. I'm not suggesting we go back to teaching QBasic, but it has to be something other than Java. I think CS departments throw everyone in the deep end with an awful curriculum, and then act surprised that everyone leaves except the hardcore nerds that already knew these subjects before they got to school.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#84
I would guess the issue is prestige. Software development, like engineering in general, is not a top-tier profession in the US. The actually top-tier professions are doctor, lawyer, and banker/financier. Software developers, like accountants, are well paid but second-tier in status, geeks who worry about the details rather than distinguished professionals who call the shots.

Interestingly, the three professions I mentioned above all have graduate degrees, whereas software developers have B.Sc. credentials, if that.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#86

I think the problem is how the subject is taught. I remember my first CS class, and there was quite a bit of diversity that quickly disappeared after the first test when people started dropping the class. (I'm pretty sure something like half the class disappeared, and I don't think this is at all unusual). So why did all those people initially find interest, and then disappear? I remember the way they taught it was V…

I remember this too. For me it was the other way around. I learned QBasic - which I still think is awesome, even it was for DOS only - first. Then I learned C# in my first year at uni and it was a breeze.

There were basically the people who could program, and the people who could not. You could see the double bell curve in the grade statistics.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#87

I majored in computer science, and I don't feel like I've learned anything. Every time there was an opportunity to learn something cool (mathematical theory behind cryptography, assembly language, details of a processor, the cache, or a communication protocol) or useful, it was glanced over as 'technical details'. Instead, I was introduced to many, many small topics (programming, graphics, databases, algorithms, user…

What was your program? I suspect there is considerable variation. My program only required students to take the intro courses for all those topics, but students were expected to pick one or more areas of concentration.

I wrote an operating system and a simulated CPU implementing (a subset of) a real-world ISA in my last semester - both comparatively in-depth things. Of course I did have to choose that, and in so doing, I chose a semester of hell.

Similarly, doing an intro-level survey of all of those topics won't leave you with much; there is a concept of depth-over-breadth that I think is lost in programs' attempts to sound rigorous by bundling in everything under the sun. However, none of those things you listed are 'small' topics and could very well be majors on their own.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#88

I think the market is just way over saturated. Hiring practices for developers point to just that. I mentioned in a different thread how simole it is for my travel-nurse of a sister to get a new job (her stints around the Bay Area paid ~100k and she only has 2 years of experience). Developers jump through hoop after hoop for employment, this wouldn't happen if they were in demand like a nurse. The market is just resp…

Nurse is licensed though. That's instant credibility.

Exactly. Also, the supply of nurses is highly constrained in the Bay Area due to a very small number of people able to graduate. There's actually a lottery to enter a registered nurse program and last time I checked the odds were less than 30% to win the ticket. Besides that, hospitals lose state subsidies if their nurse/patient ratio drops below a certain threshold. It's really apples-to-oranges.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when IT for a hospital goes on strike?

Same thing that you do when nurses go on strike. You hire a bunch of scabs and muddle through. The difference is that IT usually sucks so much that nobody notices.

If it's infrequent enough, reliability may go up as there's a moratorium on production environment changes.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#90

I majored in computer science, and I don't feel like I've learned anything. Every time there was an opportunity to learn something cool (mathematical theory behind cryptography, assembly language, details of a processor, the cache, or a communication protocol) or useful, it was glanced over as 'technical details'. Instead, I was introduced to many, many small topics (programming, graphics, databases, algorithms, user…

How long out of school are you?

I actually did Engineering but work in code every day. I noticed much the same as you: it's a million little topics. Control theory, thermo, digital filters, a bit of coding, and so on. But having come at it from another side, I figure the lesson is that you can learn any topic you like, the procedure is the same. Read something, try it yourself, search for solutions. If it's hard look at the prerequisites.

I suppose it's a bit more obvious when you study Engineering that you're not going to use all of it. But after a few years you realise that you use a lot of it. There's this meme going around about "The 20 most important equations". I think I used them all either at work or in uni.

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