Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates
"Every kid with a laptop thinks they're the next Zuckerberg, but most can't debug their way out of a paper bag," one expert told Newsweek.
Funny how everyone and their mom was screaming to study computer science 3-5 years ago. Bragging about earning 6 figure wages. This is what that kind og hype gets you. A saturated job market with high unemployment rate. Next the wages will plummet because people will be so desperate for a job, they'll gladly work for half of what they're worth.
Companies have been pushing that for many years because they wanted wages down.
This is all payback for the power the workers gained during the pandemic.
Ding ding ding ding!
This is the correct answer
This is what planning education around fantasies creates. Demanding so many go into any one field is silly. The reality is that we need many different kinds of skilled work and no one is immune from market fluctuation.
I’m not so sure. Coding is a skill, just like any other. A project or construction manager who knows VBA can automate 1/5 of their job. A mechanical engineer who knows code can modify a CNC. A sales rep with coding skills is an unstoppable force for leads, outreach and reports.
Yes, coding was long a job and it long still will be for the best in the business, the well connected, or those who focused on archaic languages. For the rest of us, it becomes a skill like trigonometry or knowing a foreign language.
most software engineering isn't actual computer science, it's plumbing. and most coding isn't software engineering, it's scripting. we overproduced CS majors when we should have taught scripting as part of the curriculum for ME, finance etc.
and even the plumbing should be separated into a different major. it's like hiring electrical engineers as electricians.
Have you used software/online services lately? It seems that half the stuff out there is broken in some way.. I don't think the problem is a saturated market at all but a lack of understanding of the profession by business leaders. I actually believe there's a software crisis happening and the tech debt is only going to get worse with over/misuse of AI. At this point, considering the chaos this might create, I don't even know if I want to be right.. There have been plenty of examples of this mismanagement causing havoc in the news the last few years and we're still moving in the wrong direction imo..
Naa, this isn't from to many people, this is from companies trying to hire people who know what the fuck they're doing. The number of people I run into on a daily basis that have zero understanding of the basics is way to high, and these people are usually devs. It's like someone wanting to build a house but all they know how to do is roofing. Colleges pop out these CS majors and they think their degree is going to land them a job, while having zero actual skills outside of what they did in college. You can't expect me to hire you for six figures if you can't even install windows or linux. Go take a help desk job to learn the basics first.
NOTE: Computer Scientists are the folks that do lots of math to figure out the best algorithm to use to solve any given computational problem. It's a very specific subset of programming.
For a long, long time companies sought to hire people with computer science degrees as software developers under the impression that these were the best people for developing software. This was a very bad assumption.
Turns out, computer scientists are often terrible at software development! They don't usually teach things like how to best organize large projects or even basics like source code management or software deployment/management in CompSci programs. Yet those are the actual skills employers need these days.
Want to get a job in software development? You don't need a degree at all! What you need is to demonstrate your skills with whatever tools/software employers are demanding. The simplest way to do that is with posting some open source code to GitHub (or similar).
When hiring—if the person I'm interviewing has a public repo that uses the tech we're using—they're basically hired immediately. At that point the only thing I care about is, "does this person seem OK-ish to work with?" LOL! Easiest hire ever 👍
Want to get a job in software development? You don't need a degree at all! What you need is to demonstrate your skills with whatever tools/software employers are demanding. The simplest way to do that is with posting some open source code to GitHub (or similar).
From my experience you certainly need both
In my experience technical knowledge can fill the gap, but it has to be demonstrable.
You're in minority. Usually when people hire programmers they want us to jump through unnecessary hoops and solve stupid fucking leetcode bullshit, and rarely care about anything else. Oh how I hate the leetcode bullshit.
The problem is that CS curricula vary quite a bit from university to university. Having ABET accreditation helps (or at least used to) a good bit with this as it required a program to include certain brass tacks material as well as (workforce) project participation items. However, many of those accredited programs effectively emerged out of EE departments so there's a very weird skewing effect in the field.
So... you hiring?
A lot of schools didn’t offer Software Engineering degrees until the past 10 years though, so people got CS degrees. In college, if I planned on doubling up on as many credits as possible for highest overlap (electives for one and required for the other), there was only a 12 hour difference in courses, which is just one more semester. I don’t think you could double major in them though because of how similar the fields were.
I started in CS for 2 years before swapping to SE, and it’s true that CS was a lot more theory, but we still had to do most of the time same hands on programming.
6% is Incredibly high unemployment, and a result of a persistent multi year coordinated class warfare effort against us programmers. We all use the AI they claim is taking the load off. We all know the truth. All of us who aren't so new at this to be wowed by the shiny, are quite aware of the parts of our job it cannot do.
The owner class is coming at us because we programmers tend to be organized and well connected, and we have serious leverage.
Remember that 94% employment still represents a lot of shared power. Let's look out for each-other. And remember that there's not going to be enough of us to clean up the messes they are making by under-hiring. Be choosy who you help with clean-up, and who you justly leave to rot in their choices. Don't stay too long working for shitty employers. Find the next gig, when it comes. Get the money they're trying to claw back from the next place, and from the previous place on a short lucrative contract. If all they understand is money, give them a chance to express how much like they staying online and in business, with it.
Every "entry level" job opening asks for five years of experience with some technology that has only existed for two years.
I got my CS degree eight years ago, and it's been gathering dust as I've been working an unrelated part-time job instead. At this rate I feel like it might be too late for me, having no real work experience at my age is something recruiters probably see as a red flag...
I have a 2 year degree in sys admin from 10 years ago. For most of that 10 years I worked as a sys admin in a smaller company where I wore many hats. I had a year of coding at uni prior to my 2 year degree, so I knew how to code. Over that 10 years, I wrote scripts and small apps to automate some of my day to day work or at least built tools to help do things.
Last year, I switched jobs and I'm kind of working part time with the dev team with a roadmap to get there full time. I'm in my mid 30s.
Basically, I just want to point out anecdotally that it's not too late to get to do the work you want, it just may be slower and in steps to get there if you can find a company to work with you. Alternatively, you could maybe get in at a start up looking for junior devs. The red type might be easier to get through there.
kinda same for bio-tech, bio related jobs. must have x, usally 2-4 years of skills. plus programs you never heard of. found out later these tend to be ghost jobs, or people they hire internally or VISA wise, and dint want to look discriminatory.
Idk, I got my entry level job with 5 years of experience. That's what internships are for when you're studying in Uni..
And I wouldn't want to hire someone who hasn't that experience. It shows a lack of drive.
Your classism is showing.
you're acting as if internships are easy to get into. dont know about cs/programming ones. but other stems like bio/biotech are notirously difficult and competitive to get one, if you can even find it. so most people try to get into limited lab spaces at a uni instead, and all the internships ive seen require a very high gpa plus geared only for specific scientists.
LeArN tO cOdE!!11!
Ah yes, this single article negates the entire field.
I'm curious how this compares to non-STEM majors.
It says in the article
The major saw an unemployment rate of 6.1 percent, just under those top majors like physics and anthropology, which had rates of 7.8 and 9.4 percent respectively.
Computer engineering, which at many schools is the same as computer science, had a 7.5 percent unemployment rate, calling into question the job market many computer science graduates are entering.
On the other hand, majors like nutrition sciences, construction services and civil engineering had some of the lowest unemployment rates, hovering between 1 percent to as low as 0.4 percent.
This data was based on The New York Fed's report, which looked at Census data from 2023 and unemployment rates of recent college graduates.
physics and anthropology, pretty much you can guess, there really isnt a market for these majors, outside of a university, or a university lab. and faculty positions are extremely competitive, and university also wish to not employ anymore tenure so they dont have to pay employees too much.(thats why they have been cutting corners with adjuncts)
this is honestly predictable, I spent a few years working as a RA in a university on computer engineering, and the general trend was to lower educational standards to meet the employment demands of the industry
I personally know quite a few people with bachelor's and even master's degrees in CS who struggle with even the most basic data analysis or programming concepts (I earned quite a lot of booze with "tutoring")
We are educating people to be unemployed with kanban experience
It would be better to introduce 'programming literacy' course. Like, learn whatever trade you like, but with a computer, because computers are everywhere now.
The computer by itself isn't that much useful, it needs to control something, like CNC welding machine, and if you can write the most basic Python to control your welding machine, you can do twice the work, because you can run your welding machine at night.
Not an employer.
From the outside, it looks like everyone expected Gen Z to just magically become computer literate because they 'grew up with them.'
because it worked for millennials! it wasn't an unfounded expectation. remember Flash? remember how many Flash games were programmed by 12yos? how many websites on Geocities and Angelfire? the 5kr1pt k1dd13z in the hacking scene? it was a golden generation of computer literacy. dev tools were basic tools, we were exposed to foundational technologies while they were new, and the Internet was oriented around producing content rather than consuming it. then came the app era, and the TV-ification of the Internet, and those skills atrophied.
The Uni I graduated from introduced basic coding into every programm, from engineering to humanities to arts. Everyone used chatgpt to get through it without a second glance because they didn't even understood why they need that. Even management didn't, I guess, but they wanted to check a box of 'being modern and progressive'.
It should be explained and deeply inserted into each program with at least a couple of mixed half-IT disciplines, like Databases in Law Practice or Computer vision in QA or Automation in Accounting or MatPlotLib in Countative Studies or... As it was there, it's an isolated course that's the same for everyone, it's on you to create a project connected to your main interest. And, as I heard, no one really made it besides getting a minimal sum to pass.
Basically, it needs effort and understanding from both sides.
Educational bureaucracy strikes again!
It's likely that you will learn the same exact thing when you're 35 and need to improve your trade skills, but as a self-study and not an university course with zero relation to real life.
The field of programming is vast, and you totally can learn only the tiny part that is useful to you and ignore everything else. And learning CS to write programs is like learning to design combustion engines to drive a car.
Lmao just learn to paint, nerds. How about you get a real degree next time
Should have gotten an English degree so they can do something useful like teach.
99.9% of jobs requore at least 3 to 5 years of experience
I recall reading a piece on The Register some weeks ago, about the "enshittification of tech jobs". It was a load of bullshit (mostly a whining piece on how workers for the megacorps were no longer being treated with red carpets) and the comments rightly stated that tech jobs were shit since the 1980s. Folks also chimed on how "have a compsci graduation and you'll get good job offers with good salaries" has been a lie for a long time, especially when you don't live near any tech hub
i have extended family that had cs, and couldnt find a job, they are probably in adjacent fields. i can say the same for bio related majors that is not going into health, which is more difficult : must have lab experience prior to graduation(catch 22, where else can you get it when not in school), you'd be lucky to even get it as a post-bacc if they dont already prioritized undergrads, and graduates first. and the biggest is research experience, which is even harder to get than lab(research as part of your degree doesnt count, unless you were published in well known journal, its pushing it though.) i know people with a MS in a bio-related degree with no job prospects, gave up after 4 months of searching in '18. agraduate degree is even less attractive to a job market.
while one of my closer fam had a wierd hybrid programming and only found a job after 1 year of searching last decade, and got laid off in '23, still unemployed to this day, he thinks he can live off what he earned over 9-10years on the job and severance pay.
i met someone in a gig job with a CS degree, was somewhat delusional, he thinks by going into a ms/ma degree for CS would mean he be able to advance in his career(obviously came to a in-between jobs because his cs dint work out), but many schools wont take someone who already has a degree, unless you're applying to a grad program. basically no 2nd BS degree, no degree shopping, or academic "incest"(which is getting a undergrad and a grad degree from the same school)
Seems ironic when you consider how many people start out in all kinds of other things and end up as programmers. [I was chemistry major]
Yeah and how much is lost to off/near shoring?
I'm quick to think this is an issue of bad educational standard mixed with confused terminology. Computer science is a very theoretical subject with very few directly practical applications. It's like studying pure math and expecting to be a qualified engineer - you can technically do the numbers, but have no idea about the practicality.
I've never met a person with a computer science degree who was skilled at operating a computer, never mind practical coding. And I've met many. Most of them expected something very different from what they actually learned.
For many computer science roles, you'll have tens of thousands of graduates chasing the job, which now demands years of experience, an impressive GitHub...
Yeah, that's the takeaway. If a kid graduates and doesn't even have a github profile, they're not gonna get hired.
Just contribute to some FOSS projects (or make your own) and you'll stand ahead of the rest.
I think they're confusing unemployment with difficulty finding jobs.
It's true that a lot of software engineers get laid off and take unemployment while theyre between jobs
It's also true that its super easy to get a job if you're an experienced software engineer.
This says more about companies simultaneously laying off and hiring than it does about the availability of jobs in the market.
Not being able to find a job is unemployment. Layoffs cause unemployment. Your takes in this thread show me that you’re kinda clueless. You should take a minute to get a more informed perspective next time.
Nope. I've lived it. Unemployment is great between jobs after you get laid off. When it runs out, get another. Easy.
