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U.S. Students Shun Computer Science, Engineering
n9fzx writes "The San Jose Mercury News reports on a study by the Computing Research Association which finds that 'Undergraduates in U.S. universities are starting to abandon their studies in computer technology and engineering amid widespread worries about the accelerating pace of offshoring by high-technology employers.' Enrollment in those fields has dropped by 19% in the past year alone." Update: 03/24 23:40 GMT by CN : jlechem wrote in with a related story: "Wired News has a story about how American companies are outsourcing not because of cheap labor but because of the American school system not being up to snuff. In a report by the AeA, they contend that American schools don't teach enough math and science anymore."
This may be a good thing for those of us who choose to stick with our CS or Engineering majors. This may leave more jobs available to those who really desire to be involved in those fields.
those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. -isaac asimov
Probably won't happen. I was a freshman for the same thing 4 years ago, and now i'm lucky to find work down at the local grocery store. I suggest you switch to something more lucrative. I really don't blame the students in the article either. Its a shame too.
Ban Reality TV!
I changed my major from computer science to Music and Recording Arts. I think that I'm going to make more money as a musician an audio engineer. . . .
In my opinion, you go to school to study things that interest you and that seem interesting to learn. Kids already "know" computers, can check email, write html, download warez, porn, and music, why would they want to learn how to program, maybe a good job?
Study what interests you, get a trade to make money.
Like KRS-One says, MCs should have more ways of making money than just rapping, same thing if you are a computer programmer.
peace, Sam
I'm to be a freshman in the fall as well, and I'm still going to Major in Computer Engineering, but only because I want to do something that I truely love, and really don't care about the pay. The truth is these jobs are going over seas, and they're moving quickly, but as we've seen with most of these job fluctuations, they tend to be short term (think: NAFTA and the like...), and they tend to stablize themselves quickly. Worst comes to worse, I'll move to India ;)
I think the biggest reason today that jobs are shifting overseas is simply the costs of running a redundant business. Very few companies are actually innovating these days, and those that are, do their work in the good ol' USA because of strong patenting laws (yes, too strong, we know..) and the like. Those same companies are offsetting the price of innovation by reducing the cost of tech support, sending it offshores to cheaper labor. I think the best way to get out of this is simply a change in buisness model; too many buisnesses are worried about the upfront costs as compared to the long-range profits to be gained, and are getting downright greedy and stingy when it comes to money...
Basically, the economic structure of America is changing. Don't like it? Move. Or stay here and adapt.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Maybe all the tards will finally leave CompSci and stop wasting the time of everyone else who actually wants to be there. Im sick of students who cant even code coming up through the system because they dont really care and have cheated their way as far as they have come. They are overcrowding the program and ruining the name of universities who would otherwise have impressive graduates coming out of their programs.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
... I know mine is! A lot of this stuff has nothing to do with what i consider computer science. (I have been programming for 10 years). Why do I need to prove that the PowerSet of Set A intersection Set B is the same as the PowerSet of A intersection the PowerSet of B (P(A inter B) = P(A) inter P(B)).
/rant
Even worse last semester in Comp Sci 309 "Software Engineering" in which a group project is 40% of your grade, and EVERYONE must write some of the code and some of the documents, I got stuck with a complete group of imbeciles that had no business being in that class and only passed the previous ones because they could implement a function given a function header and a description of what it does - not write a program. Needless to say I failed that class beause the other group members are completely incompetant - and then the professor refused to believe they were that bad. I just about printed out my entire CVS repository on sourceforge [which includes what code was written for that project, all by me], walked into his office and slammed the stack down on his desk.
PS: These group members were so incompetant that they couldn't even follow the SF.net site docso n how to setup CVS - I had to GO TO THEIR APPARTMENTS MYSELF and set it up.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
I have been a technology-oriented student for quite a long time (well, ever since 6th grade, really, and I'm a high-school senior now). While I have worked with electronics and robotics to some extent, I have the most experience in computer science and computer engineering, and have spent the majority of my time learning in these areas. However, as it has been college-applciation time, I have had to decide which field I am more inclined toward, I have chosen electrical engineering. While I may find CS and CE more enjoyable at the moment, I doubt that I could find a good job in that area now, due both to the glut in the market during the internet explosion and because of outsourcing. I may minor in CS, but I don't have high hopes of getting a good job because of it...
If you can't say something nice, make sure you have something heavy to throw.
Yes, applications to US Universities are down in EE and CS, but you'll find the biggest drop was in international student applications. Recent restrictions on international students have made the US a painful choice for higher education. I think this facet of the enrollment drop has been glossed over for the most part in the media. I was unaware until I spoke with some people in my EE departement's graduate admissions office. Granted, exporting jobs causes some of this, but let's take a look at all the causes.
I went to a state university that had a top computer science and engineering program. They didn't let a lot a people each year. Quite a lot people that loved computers probably got bumped by people that just wanted to work with computers for the money. Now, they probably got bumped because they weren't the best computer science students also, but they genuinely wanted to work with computeres and couldn't get a degree at their university of choice because of the craze.
The mass of idiots churning out of CS programs everywhere has diluted the perceived value of our degree. They also monopolize the professors' valuable time (and therefore decrease the education value for the students who are passionate for the subject) with their moronic questioning.
I say good riddance to them.
Do what you love and the money will follow. While I think this is just an appropriate example of market forces at work, job markets can be hard to judge (I have degrees in engineering, physics, and astronomy and the job market was supposes to be great when I started, turned out not to be so much later). There will be jobs for the excellent and hard working in pretty much any field they enter. If you're just chasing the jobs, please rethink your major, unless you want six figures and a company car with a BA in philosophy. Really though, be a life-long learner and a good human being and you'll probably get by OK.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
FYI, management is often full of those who couldn't hack it as a techie. Furthermore when a company gets cut back, management is often first to go. Don't worry though, I might drop a quarter in your cup when I see you begging for money on street corner after this happens.
Very few companies are actually innovating these days, and those that are, do their work in the good ol' USA because of strong patenting laws
Take a look at US Steel. The executives went for profit and not development. They slowly became outproduced by Japan, which focused on technological development, not boosting profits and pocketing the money. When they knew the steel industry was headed for bust in America they layed off all of their workers, and looked elsewhere for profitable investments. Take a look at the steel industry in Germany. Laborers and executives fight for equal say in where surplus labor capital goes to, mainly not in CEO's pockets but rather the companies development. Toyota is also a good example, which assures lifetime employment. This does not mean that all companies in the US screw their employees when they see profit, or that other countries have across the board better social protection, either. But looking at the past does provide some insight.
My point of view...
The numbers aren't hocus pocus. I majored in CS and graduated several years ago. Just from personal experience, the unemployment rate is very real. The loss of jobs is very real. When I graduated in 2000, 100% of my friends had steady jobs. After the crash, 90% had lost their jobs and some had gotten new jobs. This not an exaggeration.
I guess you can't exactly say these job losses were caused by outsourcing as it was the dot-com crash. That said, jobs are being created but not much in tech.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
It would be interesting to see how much of this 19% enrollment drop-off may be attributed to the increased difficulty and harassment involved in foreigners getting student visas to attend colleges in the United States? A great many of these foreign students seem to enroll in technology-related programs such as EE/CE/CS/etc.
I'm fortunate in that I'm a decent programmer and a pretty good artist... this has opened many doors for me. What do other /. readers think about more cross disciplinary students? I know there will always be a place for pure programmers, but I also hope to see more programmer-minded people in different fields. Will the declining enrollment in SE/EE possibly result in this trend?
I think there is confusion here. Computer Science, its just that, a science and algorithms and math are part of it. At the opposite end of this are Software Engineers, we are the ones that build large scale projects. The CS guys provide us the tools (algorithms, etc) and we use them to build the products. I think schools should offer Software Engineering courses along with CS courses. I personally am more interested in building applications, but understand the importance and need for CS as well.
Well stated. What people don't realize is that people like you, who doing exciting and interesting work, i.e. developing new ways of doing things, innovation, etc. aren't getting outsourced. It's the people that are doing mind-numbing coding and debugging, that are getting canned.
I don't think people realize how large the non-glamorous side to programming is. Like, when an employer wants to add a couple of new searches to his database, or make an update to an installation script, etc. This is all work that's hardly worth of a CS degree and $70K a year.
Take it from someone who got on that track only to get off again (after getting my MA in history)...the folks who stick with the low-paying humanities track literally *can't* do anything else.
That might be because they love it so much, or it might be because they have such raging personality defects that they realize tenure is the only way for them to survive. There's a lot of dysfunctional people in academia, and not just cute eccentricity either. Narcissism and backstabbing the likes of which corporate America rarely sees....
Premature optimization is the root of all evil
Going to law school still requires an undergraduate degree (in the US). Law schools still want students with degrees in technical disciplines.
With that said, having an engineering degree is still a novelty in law school, but it's wearing off fast. Pretty soon they too will be a dime a dozen, and you'll need at least a Masters or a PhD to have an edge in law school admissions at the best schools.
Granted a lot of those people were wannabe hacks that didn't know shit about computers, but got a job anyway because basically *anyone* could get a job back then, but some of us knew which direction was up at least - having been programming computers since the 80's - and just wanted to bypass the stupid educational system that was taking WAY too friggin long to finish. Many of these people (myself included) decided after the bust to go back and get that elusive degree, only to find out recently that it ain't going to do a damn bit of good so why bother?
Many jobs in IT today do stipulate that the potential employee have a college degree with X number of years experience, but most of those (and many others) will accept "equivalent experience" as a substitute for the degree. The only place I can see this being an issue is for government contracting (you are on a lower pay scale w/o a degree), and possibly places like MS, IBM, and Sun... but who the fuck wants to work there anyway?
People in my position could go back and finish a degree, and then possibly get an advanced degree, but I'm getting older and starting to burn out writing code for someone else. In the next few years I will be starting up a business or two anyway and I doubt that a CS degree will help with that.
Anyway, I guess that I would like to have that piece of paper that says I actually finished the program, but realistically thinking it just isn't worth my time anymore.
This is good news indeed. Now the industry will be filled with people who work because they love the work. It reminds of a post I read in an article on Slashdot a while back, one reader said something similiar to "you either love what you do or be forced to love what you do".
Btw, I graduated and went straight into web development. So most of what I learned in school is now rarely applied to my work. It was great course though. I learned a lot about CPUs, Hardware programming and the fact that finding a female student in Computer Engineering in my school was like winning the state lottery. We had rumors that a girl enrolled in the Comp. Eng. but we never saw proof of it.
I'm a senior in computer engineering and I'm not too worried. This isn't like the textile industry where robots are poised to take my place. There will always be a need for someone to write firmware code, assembly or other tasks because computers aren't going to go out of style anytime soon.
Yeah, the market may be bad today, a year from today or even 5 years from today, but don't jump ship too soon. Assuming you had a BS in CE, a good employer of a non-CE, but computing-type job should see your BS and realize you can do more things than you were taught. I already have an AS in Civil Engineering, that shows I know other forms of engineering and transfers over the core classes so I don't have to overlap my classes. My dad got his BS in EE, but worked with chemicals for 15 years till his company was bought out but the new company went under. He now fixes electronic sensor machines for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality doing what he is educated for with a generous salary.
I guess the moral of the story is get the computer degree you are trying to get and in the long run it'll be okay.
Great for you, I have a doctorate from Oxford on applications of formal methods to massively parallel systems. Watching Tony Hoare prove Quicksort correct using Z is kinda useful and interesting but not because you are likely to invent an algorithm. I don't think I have ever worked on a project where algorithm performance was a major problem. Sure there are stupid choices (like the database package I once tested that used bubblesort).
You say - get them out of a book. Lemme ask you, how do they get into the book in the first place ?
Well probably Knuth or Hoare thought it up. Offhand I can't think of a really interesting algorithm since quicksort.
Its like the difference between arithmetic and problem sets. The ability to manipulate abstract algebra is an interesting and somewhat useful skill. I can hire people with that skill by the boatload (sic). What I want is people who can map from the concrete to the abstract and back again. About one comp sci student in ten that I interview is capable of that.
See, that's what Computer "Science" is really about. Ask Dr. Knuth - the father of Computer Science, whether algorithms are important or software engineering is ? He's written 3 tomes on algorithms, none on software building.
Actually that was the point of the extended books on the TeX documentation - which I have read and discussed with Knuth when I was working on adding math markup to HTML. It is not an algorithmic problem, its a representational one.
Making large projects work should technically not even be in Computer Science. Its mostly a management skill
Again you miss the point, I am not looking for robots who I have to spoon-feed problems to. I am looking for people who can take a set of requirements and an outline architecture and make it work with existing code. I don't want someone who can't use the code manager, or writes code that only he can understand.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
oh sweet irony...
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
It was insanely difficult, and as an experienced programmer whose contributed significantly to several major OS project and started two of his own, I nearly drowned. The graduation rate was 30%. Even then a lot of people who could only be described as dildos made it through.
I was *appalled* one day when a friend called me from la sierra university down the street, he was having trouble with one of his assignments, "Did I have a minute?" His assignment -- write a program that converted Celsius to Fahrenheit. Specifically, he was stuck on the algebra of the situation. He didn't understand the equation 9/5x+32.
That being said, these corporations are full of shit, these people are quickly weeded out. Look through the smoke screen. There is a pool of talented engineers working at Walmart and living with their parents, if they're having trouble finding them they aren't looking.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
If the job situation continues to deteriorate, the effects can be more than just getting rid of the dead wood. The field of Aerospace Engineering was nearly destroyed by the massive cutbacks in military and NASA spending during the 1970s. Everyone read stories in the newspaper about highly-skilled engineers driving cabs and losing their houses. The follow-on effects wiped out many academic programs. Most of the best students went to other fields where the job prospects were not so dismal. NASA now has a severe demographic problem with its workforce. Many of its best people have died or retired, or will do so in the near future.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
?
That's not an insult. It's true. If you want to learn a specific trade, then you go to a trade school, like ITT tech. I'm being very serious here.
Why would you pay insane amounts in college tuition to learn from uber-intelligent professors about specific technologies when you could do that at a trade school? You go to those universities to learn theory, that's what you're paying for. Because being taught that stuff and learning that stuff is NOT something you can get at a trade school.
Your analogy regarding physics and mech eng is a poor one.
They don't have a dept for software engineering because that's more of a job title than it is an areas of study or science (at least as of now). They do, however, offer classes on software engineering.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
The current SAT's have 1.5 Verbal sections and .5 Math sections. I say this b/c about half of the math part is written and the 'process' counts more than the answer (in other words, you can get the right answer and still have the wrong answer, like the verbal section).
.5 Math sections.
Now, some stupid board wants to add a 'writing skills' section to the test (aka, another English section), making it 2.5 English sections to the
That 'writing skills' section is the reason I was not National Merit, as I am not very good at English/Verbal, but got an 800 on the Math section.
So now that we have so much English on the test, a Math person doesn't do as well on the test and thus doesn't get the scholarships or into the best schools. Before you could do ok on one section and well on another and not have to worry about which school you get into. There has been a systematic killing of Math skills by a dumb group of people on a board somewhere.
Of course, this could always be a side effect of placing too much faith in one stupid test.
-CPM
---You're all I need, When the water runs deep, You're all I need, Now I cry my soul to sleep -- Collective Soul, Needs
At my school, the CS department has a pretty low graduation rate
(His school is Michigan Tech, www.mtu.edu)
That's because the program is friggin' difficult. I should know, my Bachelor's is in CS from Tech.
The program is also outstanding from a learning standpoint. It's got a good grounding in theoreticals and practicals, and the profs(for the most part) know their stuff.
Grad rate may be low, but the students they turn out are good. A better test, IMHO
It's funny, I graduate last year an Ivy League Institution with a degree CS and I would be more then happy to have that job. At least then I wouldn't have to be searching for a job in the retail sector. I have a $160,000 education and yet I can't even get a job selling computers at circuit city.
1) Basic financial common sense like that outlined in The Millionaire Next Door. Stay out of debt unless what you bought has is likely to return your initial investment plus the cost of interest. Going into debt for a postgraduate education is a good gamble. Going to Disneyland every year on a credit card is a poor gamble. Don't buy crap you don't need with money you don't have.
2) And don't have kids unless you have $500K in liquid assets to fund their development. If you can't raise it, feed it, and educate it to the postgraduate level, it's not going to have what you consider a middle class lifestyle. Don't like that? Tough. Bitch about it all you want, but don't waste your time or its time by breeding something you can't program to the point of self sufficiency.
3) If it's too late for #2, start dissecting frogs and playing with logic puzzles. Explain that ones and zeroes can encode words, and that words can contain instructions. Explain that DNA is like ones and zeroes. Play games with ones, zeroes, and codes. Assuming your offspring is human, your offspring's brain comes with preloaded firmware that's capable of doing the rest. Catch is, it also comes with a few zillion open ports suitable for exploitation -- and everyone from your offspring's peers, to marketroids, to your own political leaders, is portscanning it 24/7. Keep your offspring's CPU pegged on useful processes as a first line of defense against hijackers.
4) Start with a firm grounding in rationality and the scientific method. Work up to Organic Chemistry + Biology + Computer Science + Bioinformatics = Biological Engineering. Depending on how things work out abroad (because the technology leaders sure as hell won't be coming from here anymore), you may wish to swap out the bioinformatics and add in some inorganic chemistry and you've got Materials Science and/or Nanotechnological Engineering.
As for #4 - if they're not teaching it in the schools, that's fine. If you're reading this, you've got most of what you need. You don't need a biology background to beat the system from public school to an undergraduate degree -- you just need to stay a chapter or two ahead of your offspring while you learn about it yourself.
I am currently attending RIT for a Masters in Comp Sci. Last May I recieved a Bacholers in Software Engineering from RIT. For the past several years, RIT has been trying to deal with it's rettention problem ... right now, the "grand idea" is to reduce the acdemic program. This would involve reducing the maximum number of co-ops and reduce total number of required credit hours.
... and this article is proof of that. Why would I want to hire someone who has less expereince coming out of college ... when I could hire someone overseas for less who knows at least as much. Its a damn shame. Most classes I took were vauable - at least the ones within my major. Its pretty damn obvious that they wont cut math/science/lib arts ... so the only thing that will suffer is the core courses. what a shame.
... its just a bad Idea. If they want to solve the retition issue, they outta look at revoking the dry-campus policy.
This is a horrible idea
Pitty on ol al simone and the administration
/* Lobster Stick To Magnet!*/
If somebody wants to slap together VB apps,
then maybe I could agree with you.
I sure didn't want to do that, and I didn't
want to screw around with LISP either.
Where it the place for highly-intelligent people
who want to be part of a team designing large and
complex software like:
Solaris C library, Linux kernel, Mozilla, Excel,
MacOS X display PDF engine, Oracle, google's
back-end database, IBM's Java JIT engine, VmWare,
vxWorks ports, Cisco router internals...
Sorry, but ITT tech isn't the place. It doesn't
offer a real degree with any standards. It has a
reputation for being a place for the non-so-bright.
I really do see your comment as an age-old insult
that isn't at all fair to those with an engineering
mindset and intelligence. I think you know it too.
Since software engineering isn't commonly offered
as a degree, people go into computer science.
Then of course they complain about all the
impractical and out-of-touch bullshit they get
stuck learning. They get LISP, but nothing about
optimizing data structures for cache layout and
avoiding TLB misses. In computer science, a binary
tree is faster than a multi-way tree. In software
engineering, dealing with real hardware, this is
not usually the case.
There ought to be something besides trade shops
like ITT tech and the mental masturbation of CS.
Until that appears, be kind to the engineering
types stuck in CS.
JUNIOR? I know people who are far out of college and know less of the world than I do. Its about how open your eyes are, and in this country people seem to like to walk around with them shut. I only spent a year at college but I still opened my eyes and saw I was wasting my time there for many reasons. Now I have a better tech job than most of my friends will when they graduate in 2 years. ;-D .) would place me at graduation I got an internship at a tech firm, showed them that I had techinical know how, and wanted to do a more technically oriented job. Now I am a sysadmin, making great pay for my lack of "education". .
Rather than hoping RIT (god forsaken place. .
I've also learned more about the way a business works, unix, and programming in the last year, than my "collegues" have in the last two years. Lesson learned: School isn't always the best way to prepare yourself for the future. .
Also - - what kind of comp sci program doesn't even introduce unix to students before their senior year of college (and possibly not even then). . . a friend of mine didn't knwo what I was talking about when I was discussing linux and he is a 3rd year comp sci major - talk about being unprepared for the job market.
Software isn't really engineering. They don't have to take engineering exams be certified hackers. Sorry to be an ass, but it's true. In computer engineering, we did circuts, and writing code in assembly to run on those IC, naturally we started with easier languages, java, C++, then went on to kernel development before hitting that, but building hardware is engineering, not writine a program that sends all of this month's inventory to a different file to compare it against last months. Or putting up the latest website with fancy widgets.
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
Hate to point this out but you are citing propaganda from a right wing think tank, the CATO Institute. It was founded by the Koch family among others who own one of largest energy companies and polluters in the U.S.
http://www.counterpunch.org/behan01192004.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/behan01192004.html
The Koch's are best friends with the Bush family and huge backers of George W.'s reelection campaign. One of the elder's in this family had a little fling with Anna Nicole Smith.
One of the CATO directors is, or at least was, Rupert Murdoch head of the Fox network and their right wing propaganda news network.
These people have a vested interest in trying to downplay the consequences of outsourcing. The Cato Institute and the Bush administration are 100% pro big business and pro wealth. They are 100% indifferent to the welfare of the U.S. middle and lower classes, you know the people that work for a living, except they want Bush to get reelected so they NEED to churn out this crud in the hopes people will believe it and still vote for him. I'm assuming you must be upper middle class aspiring to the upper class or just dumb to believe it. The Bush administration has put out rosy labor projections every year they've been in office and NONE of the jobs they promised would be created by cutting taxes for the rich have been created. Correction they have been created but they are being created in China and India.
The current rush to outsourcing is unprecedented in U.S. history. It is the product of a perfect storm, cheap container shipping, cheap telecom, collapsing trade barriers and the opening of China's economy and its massive, cheap labor pool. Couple that with the fact U.S. labor has been priced out of the global labor market by years of inflation, prosperity and declining education. This is not a transient anomoly to dismiss. Its an accelerating trend. It is either naive or deceitful to contend that its business as usual and its nothing to worry about. It was not so long ago that the U.S. trade deficit was $50-$100 billion dollars and we were concerned. It is now $500 billion dollars and exploding. The U.S. simply can't sustain this hemoraging of cash indefinitely. The multinational corporations on the other hand don't care. You see they are for the most part now truly multinational, headquartered in the Caribbean and manufacturing wherever they can find the cheapest labor. If the U.S. craters they will just sell goods to the newly affluent Chinese and Indians, its a bigger market than the U.S. anyway and they are just now aspiring to by all the things American's already have. The execs and share holders will probably still get rich unless the Chinese and Indian execs manage to fox them too. Whatever happens they will be living in gated communities or the Caribbean and will be largely indifferent to the fact most American's are going to be pushed in to poverty in the next couple of decades. Most American's simply cant compete head to head with workers in China and India without working for what are poverty wages in the U.S. Maybe they could take solace in service jobs that have to be in the U.S. but the Bush administration is eager to launch a jobs program for Mexican labor to insure those jobs will also go to the cheapest possible labor. So you are going to have to train a very select class of jobs to make a good living in the next couple of decades, lawyer or an MBA heading for a position in a multinational are probably the best bets.
The Chinese economy ia already at 6 trillion and is expected to eclipse the U.S. and EU, now at a little over 10 trillion, in another 10-20 years. I doubt its going to take that long myself.
There has been a real loss of more than 2 million jobs under the Bush administration which hasn't happened since the great depression. It can be attributed to the overmployment of the bubble and 9/11 but there is simply no way the U.S. economy is going to create good jobs again with the current ru
@de_machina
"American school system not being up to snuff. In a report by the AeA, they contend that American schools don't teach enough math and science anymore.
I'm an American math and science teacher. I have found that the basic American student is trying to avoid thinking less and less. I've seen many students drop out of Algebra II and Pre-Calculus and take consumer math because "it's too hard". American parents are too busy making too many excuses for their children also. Students don't want to take a structured programming class because it would require them to find and correct their own mistakes and think too much. I have a hell of a time getting them to do that in my HTML class.
I know there's all kinds of self taught programmers out there (myself included) because your school didn't have a staff member knowledgeable enough. I know there's a lot of schools out there that are way behind the technology.
With that said, the US is going to do nothing but fall behind unless more students find the desire to think.
That is absolutely, positively, definitively the case at my university. When I announced last semester my change to Computer Science from Accounting, people looked at me as if I'd just announced that I was from Pluto. The trend here is that about 40% of CS majors switch because of the math.
/. crowd knows is drying up fast. I think that most of the "I have to flip burgers" crowd are simply incompetant or unwilling to work hard. The people I see graduating here and going on to great jobs are the ones that love doing the work. That's going to be me, friend. There are no shortcuts to anyplace worth going to.
I was originally going to do CS, but I was afraid of the math. Really, though, is it worth a lifetime of doing a job I can just tolerate because I don't want to take Linear Algebra?
What's really interesting is that I see people around me dropping out because they HATE courses like C and Operating Systems (UNIX, mostly). Those courses are the reason I want to be here!
I believe that most of the current crop of CS folks are in it because of the money, which the
Am I the only one who thinks that the outsourcing thing is a fad? There is simply no replacement for having people on the ground close to your market. Managers may simply be disgusted with the current crop of dot-com hopefuls who hate technology. It's going to balance out, just like anything else, and become a trade.
And those of us who stick it out now and show people what quality work looks like will be on top when that happens. Not rich, mind you, but certainly not poor.
Even though it might be a lot more work (from what I've seen), even though we do calculus coming out the wazoo and still have to take lots of weird math and physics and mechanics, in the long run, it's gonna pay off.
"Engineer" still carries some weight, it's still a worthy title. Something to look forward to, and something to take pride in. Not that CompSci isn't, but only fellow "gears" can know the magic of the iron ring, that fellowship of brotherhood within our hallowed halls. It's something special, it's like being part of an exclusive club.
So good for you man. Good choice. I don't think you'll regret it. After all, only WE have a cool theme song. "We are we are we are we are..."
In the name of fairness, why don't you go take the LSAT, score in the 90th+ percentile (because that's what it takes to get into a tier one law school), then go look at Havard's curriculum for law school (where you will be doing A LOT of pro-bono work and A LOT of case review, and taking quite a few classes...) and then tell me that law school is a cake walk? ...just to shut people like you up. I took enough history courses with my engineering degree to get a minor if I so desired. Even ones that weren't required. I would have LOVED to have become a historian - unfortunately, the pay is miserable.
Not all EE's are illiterate, and this one in particular can legalese with with best of them. So don't paint us all with the same brush - and while I have no problem reading and interpreting Canadian law - I had to take a law course to qualify for the engineering association, FWIW, as well.
All engineers in this country are required to take many economics, arts, and english courses - humanities - so they are well rounded. Arts students IMHO do not have the burden of mathematics and science placed upon them that would make THEM as well rounded.
There are exceptions that prove BOTH rules. The other fact is lawyers do not produce new products in a society. They are a result of people being greedy and utterly miserable to one another. The state of the legal profession in Canada is not as bad as the USA - the concept of "nominal" damages still exists.
Who's the one painting who with the big brush? Nowhere did I state my skills were superior. I stated that EE and ME are the most difficult UNDERGRADUATE degrees to take. If you do an informal survey on campus, you will find most students agree with me. Law is a GRADUATE calling.
Secondly, I stated that I believe math is NOT difficult, and that it is mearly taught incorrectly.
Perhaps you (the lawyer) are the one who should learn to read more critically. Or, are you compensating for something?
..don't panic
I say that's BS. I went to high school in the 70s; it was incredibly lax. I used to make a point of doing all of my homework each day in the 25-minute study hall at lunch hour. I could do it because they just didn't give us that much work.
When I look on the news I always see people saying that we need to pile more and more work on students, and that they need to spend more time learning math and science and computers. Well, my high school had exactly one PDP-8 shared by 2000 students, and (much to my dismay) physical education was the top priority class (8 semesters required). My math and science classes were a breeze for most of the students.
I went to one of the top engineering universities in the US and graduated in the top 1%. There were plenty of others like me there who did well despite not having been subjected to a fascist K-12 regime. While I was there I often saw groups of those highly-educated foreign students huddling at tables struggling to do their studies communally. Their background allowed them to eventually crank through their work, but without much imagination or independence. In contrast, I often figured out a unique shortcut to get the work done quickly so that I could get out to happy hour.
How could this be? I think that it was because the culture in the USA promoted experimentation and self-initiative. I learned more playing around on my own with soldering irons, model rockets, home-built pyrotechnics, my teenage-punk muscle car, etc. than any high-school lab could have taught.
I think that if we're having problems cranking out good engineers today, it's because we've lost that edge in instilling self-initiative in kids. Maybe it's because everything is so pre-fab today, like the way it's hard to find a set of generic Lego bricks, and kids don't have to use their imaginations as much. Maybe it's because there are fewer areas left where a guy tinkering in his garage could make a breakthrough like the original Apple computer, so people just don't try. Maybe it's because parents don't spend as much time with their kids; I learned a huge amount of stuff doing projects with my dad. I don't know, but I sure don't think that cramming more work onto school children is going to fix it. Creating a top-notch engineer is a much more complex process than a bunch of school assignments.
When I first started, there were 25 computer science majors enrolled at this small 2-year technical institute. Out of those 25, I had only 3 or 4 bad apples and the rest were great. I really liked teaching material that regular students wouldn't get to learn in school (ODBC, XML, ASP scripting, packet sniffing with Ethereal, etc.) I thought I found a job that would be fun and challenging because I would keep getting a high quality crop of students because of the lack of computer jobs.
Flash forward to today, there are about 18 current computer science majors. No surprise in the drop in enrollment. Out of those 18, however, only 4 students know what the hell they're doing. The other 14 have no business being in this field. 6 months ago when I got these new crop of students, I'm thinking "WTF Happend!?". Some of these students are in their fourth networking course, and I still need to review with them how to create a folder in Windows. In my programming class, a student turns in an assignment that converts feet to meters, and her code accomplishes this by multiplying the number of feet by 2 (and I even give them the calculation for how to convert feet to meters)!
I have dozens and dozens of these stories and everyday I'm adding a new entry. To me there's just no point in teaching these students anymore. I don't know if it's because we're marketing the technical institute to the wrong target audience or if the high schools in this area just don't care anymore, but all the instructors I talk to agree on one thing: the quality of students is not getting better.
Why become a plumber and route shit all day for years, when you can work in a nice clean cubicle and deal with shit all day? :)
*grin* Well, the plumber makes just as good money, and he has job security...
Just kidding, sorta... but fifteen years ago, I decided that the potential jobs I was lining up by going for a CS degree sucked; so I pursued other avenues until I found something I liked (carpentry) and found job security...plus I can pursue computers as a hobby at home because I'm not sick and tired of dealing with them all day (as a 30 year tech told me today "Why would I want to play with a computer at home? Hell, I don't even read my email at home...")
Yay for Hawaiian shirt day!
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
The reality is that the job situation is fine.
Says the employed programmer.
If you are a good programmer, you likely have not had trouble finding work,
I know eight programming languages, three of them cold. I've been unemployed for over three years. I couldn't rent a job with a coupon.
you won't have a job when you graduate. You will have a job.
Until you get laid off. Then the mortgage falls through, and your wife goes into labor in the parking lot because there isn't any room in the ER, and you find you have to choose between food and electricity, or dignity and a paycheck, or rent and car payment.
Then you find out just how much your former employer doesn't give a shit, and how they precisely timed your layoff for maximum cruelty, plus maximum hype for the announcement (the following day, naturally) that they had reached record profits for the quarter and the new product (that you helped build) was projected to increase sales 500%.
And so you're back at Poverty-Mart, stocking shelves to pay off your five-figure student loans for your useless Magna Cum Laude degree. Until you get laid off again, of course.
I share the same hope as many of the other posters that the quality of graduates will improve. It would save me a lot of time and improve the quality of my day if I didn't have to look at a pseudo-programmer's resume.
Really? Degreed candidates are "pseudo-programmers" now? Well, I guess that proves my argument about the usefulness of a college degree.
See, here a degree used to qualify someone ON ITS FACE for their job. Now, it's "well, it's nice you have a degree, but I still don't believe you, so get out."
Yeah. The future's bright in them cubicles, ain't it?
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
I know that grad students are being paid little compared to the caliber of work they perform. However after that 4-7 years they command high salaries. Also it is not a great deal for the taxpayer when he pays for the tuition, housing, and admittedly small salary of these students but who benefits are the corporations that give research grants. (Okay some grants are from the government) When I graduated there were very few jobs available. Almost none of my classmates had a job lined up. Many of us applied to grad school though I tested the waters for a couple years first. We found we could generally get scholarships that would cover tuition but nothing else. When I finally tried it I had to work a fulltime job as well as fulltime school so that I could pay rent and buy groceries. I gave it my best shot but I don't believe anyone could work 50 hours a week and commute to school for an 18 credit hour load. I was falling asleep on the highway and even in mid sentence. I would have been more than happy to live in on-campus housing and work for 8 bucks an hour in a lab doing research related to my degree which is what most of the foreign students were getting in addition to the full tuition scholarships. Needless to say I burned out and dropped out, but it sure wasn't because I found some other place to 'earn good money and be appreciated'. I do agree though that it is easier for American students to be distracted both from their studies and from their academic track. i.e. One might stop with a Masters and accept a 60k job than stick with for a few more years and be worth 80k. All of the foreign students I am referring to worked hard and were very smart and I am happy for them personally, but I'll bet if I moved to China or Saudi Arabia *they* wouldn't invest money in *my* future. I'm sure they would tell me to pay my own way or "hit the road Jack!"
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
The skills any geek worth his/her salt should be studying, imho...
1) reloading cartridge ammunition
2) manual labor-intensive and technology-poor farming and manufacturing techniques (bootstrap baby, bootstrap...)
3) pioneer-style medical care
The real irony is that a nation of overweight cows sitting in front of the magic box can't even see it coming. When the feces hits the ventilation system, no degree will mean as much as simply being ready to deal with the new 'economy'...and like it or not you can't eat money, degrees, nice resumes, or fancy algorithms...its called hubberts peak, and I believe we just hit it...mod me as off topic, but think about it...
you think it's easy, but you're wrong...
What's interesting is the lack of these basic skills in so many people I've encountered with CS degrees in my working life.
It's downright shocking, even, how unadaptable some of these people are. Many BS in CS people I've worked with spent all their time learning (insert programming language of choice here) and failed to learn the basic lessons programming teaches. It seems like a lot of these people missed the forest for the trees, which is part in parcel to the point I was driving at.
As for loving what they do, in my IT department of ~50 people, I'd say a scant 15% of them are interested enough in what they do for a living to work on something related but outside the scope of their actual 9-5 required teching. I couldn't be happier that I've found something I like enough that when I hang it up for the day at the Windows shop, I want to go home and mess with my Debian box, or hack an XBox, or read advisories on www.cert.mil, or post on /. or whatever.
Seems like most of my colleagues can't punch out fast enough so they can forget about tech for another day.
It's lame, and sort of sad.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
This started with a story about college kids abandoning CS and engineering because fresh grads aren't getting jobs. There's nothing new about this. Enrollments have always tracked the market demand. There's not much demand now; companies aren't hiring. Yeah yeah, study something you love. There are lots of interesting things to do but few that companies are willing to pay well for. It's not about skills. It's not about broken schools. Somehow, every offshoring discussion turns into thread upon thread about skills and brokens schools. It's about money $$$. There are vast pools of educated low paid people in countries with low cost of living. Technology business is shifting to those countries. It's NOT because they are smarter or more highly skilled. It's because they are an order of magnitude cheaper. As these high paid jobs leave the US and poor people enter the US in droves, the US standard of living is going down faster than the Chinese or Indian standard of living is rising. Watch energy prices. That's a good barometer for the weakening dollar. The decline in the value of the dollar is a world vote of no confidence in the US economy. So, native US citizens are still saddled with the same debt, mortgages and cost of living but having to settle for menial wage jobs. This plus the decline in the dollar and ultimately, government entitlements will mean most formerly middle class persons will burn through their savings becoming working poor. America will descend to the level of a second then a third world country. Things are liable to get real ugly. You can think of the engineering schools as sort of a canary in a coal mine.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
...most 'modern' school systems do not teach their students how to THINK. The emphasis is always placed on getting the 'correct answer', to the point of spoon feeding the students a rote method of solving a problem. To some degree, I've heard that this happens over in Asia as well, where the answer is the most important thing.
Here in the US, most K - 12 teachers are grossly underpaid (or incompetent), we have parents who don't want to be bothered with their kids, while TV and Nintendo are the baby-sitters.
As a child, I always wanted to go into art. Coming from an Asian background, my parents 'convinced' me (more like forced) me into studying engineering. I went into EE and struggled most of the way through. In my junior year, I was able to finally figure things out, and went on to graduating in the top 15% of my class. I am grateful for all those hours spent in the lab, working til 5AM most nights, taking 19 hours of courses my senior year in college (with three design courses), and otherwise living the geek life.
Engineering helped me learn two important things I apply to my life on a daily basis: 1) problem-solving techniques and 2) perseverance.
I'm now working in IT, completing my masters in computer animation, while freelancing as a cartoonist for EE Times (and much happier for it!)
The PC Weenies: 11 Years of Online Tech 'Too
This sort of makes me worry about the school that you went to. Where I went to school, the CS curriculum was really just another form of math. The math class requirements were steep, since it was a required minor, and the CS classes taught a much more in-depth form of the CS-vital math.
Stuff like automata theory and advanced logic were offered through the CS department, not the Math department. Other requirements were a firm understanding of the lambda calculus, and a whole lot of other mathematical stuff that goes into defining languages. Programming took a back seat to the actual understanding of CS concepts.
If your school were anything like mine, you missed out on a whole lot of detailed math by shunning CS-offered courses. CS is essentially a subset of Mathematics, and has less to do with things like web programming, RAD, VB, Java, etc, than it does with algorithmic efficiency, languages and machines, logic, discrete mathematics, and a sleiu of other things.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
I'm going to agree with you here. I'm posting anon because I don't want to bring negative karma towards my home institution, which has been very good to me, but I'm finding that my school is just too easy.
To preface this, I'm primarily a math major, and I consider myself pretty smart. But I'm not THAT smart.
I literally don't show up to classes for a week, spend an hour with the book and get caught up on a week's worth of material for the quiz/HW/test. My CS classes thus far have been a professor reading from the book for the entire class period, writing examples on the board, and getting things wrong at least 3/4 of the time. Any question that deviates from the material he planned for class that day, he has no idea.
I feel like this man is just barely ahead of me half the time, and he's dropped statements that makes it seem like he just got into CS several years ago.
Our school has a liberal arts requirement of philosophy, etc. The problem is that those classes are equally braindead, and don't even have the advantage of being in either of my majors. The school has a special program that requires first-year undergrads to waste time an an even more "special" class where you spend an extra hour without credit and the pace is slower.
The worst part is that this is a fairly well-known undergrad school. I hope there's greener pastures elsewhere.
As a footnote, I know that I can be spending my copious free time pushing the borders of my math/CS knowledge. The issue at stake here is that I'm going to be walking out with this flimsy paper degree, having paid money for very little in the way of services.
I'm in that situation. Made good money for 6 years after dropping out of college. Now I'm back in school. Currently CS/EE thinking about Finance. Strangely attracted to chemistry/materials engineering. Not sure what to do with my life. Feel like a 19 year old. I love it.
you should go back and get the business degree you've always wanted. from what I hear, any idiot can get one, but the smart folks who rise to the top rise FAAARRRRR to the top.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
Wow!!! I think I'm having exactly the same experience as you! By any chance, do you go to the University of Arizona?
I wrote a rant in my livejournal about this issue, and I think it's damn good. Read it here.
This was all prompted by a failed English essay... my mother (a *cough* social worker) simply couldn't understand why, and thought I should talk to the teacher, but my Engineer father immediately thought it ludicrous that I was graded largely on my ideas (*cough* completely subjective). just for the record, my arguments were damn solid, if not the most backed-up in the world.
That's what makes me really appreciate Math and CS. In Math there are actually right and wrong answers... in English, there's the teacher's opinion, and yours.
Wowweee, and I thought life in India was tough! 7 am to 9 pm??????? I still find that a little hard to believe. What exactly extra are Koreans learning? Situation from the other side Asia(India). School hours are 8 am to 2 pm. Some schools count Saturday as a weekday. Vacations are vacations. Period. The exams can be tough, but with 1 billion people, the problem arises with the grading. Until at least next year, the system is based on average subject percentages, i.e. Person A scored 95% in Math, 90% in English, so the avg percentage is 92.5%. The issues with this is that at least 50,000 people will get 94%, and another 10,000 people will get 96%. And there is space for only 3000 people so u have to raise the cutoffs for admission to an absurd 98% in scome schools(and yes, 97.5% is not enough to get in).... This situation does cause pretty rigourous discipline to emerge. Due to this stupidity however, they are moving to a letter-based grading system next yr, and are going to base college admissions on more 'wholesome' attributes (kinda like USA I guess..). We do just fine without the hockey sticks, thanks. They used to wrap your wrists with a ruler, but those days are mercifully, long gone.
My Favourite Meme
India has 1 billion people. Even if you take 800 million out (agriculture, poverty), given India's IT/Tech push, even if US is 20% better on average you'll be able to have more decent/top notch Indians. I'd bet all of that 200 million can speak and spell decent English. Can't say the same for the US.
This is without considering costs/salary.
Nowadays, it's back to business degrees and Liberal Arts, somebody to manage the deconstruction of the national economy, and someone to write articles that it's all gonna be all right. At a time like this, it's too God damn bad that there's nobody with even a prayer of getting into the White House that has the vision to get this nation some wood again.
Does the private sector have the vision and the money? Not unless I see Bill Fucking Gates decide that life just won't be complete unless his kids stand on Mars.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Sure, outsourcing is not to save money. It's to gain access to better educated engineers. Yup. And, I have a bridge to sell you, too.
OK, I'm in hardware, not software, so my experience may not be 100% typical for Slashdot readers. And in my field, it isn't India, but rather China and Taiwan where all the jobs are going.
I work for a Fortune 100 corporation, whose celebrity CEO is a huge and very public advocate of offshore oursourcing. And, she's notorious for laying off people by the thousands.
The last project I did (before quitting my division in disgust and completely changing job functions) was a design that I was instructed to outsource to China. I needed a staff of about 12 engineers. I was given only four and told to make do, without schedule or scope slip, and to use a Chinese outsource vendor in lieu of a more complete engineering staff. The corporation told me which exactly vendor to use. I had essentially no degrees of freedom.
To cut a long story short, the program was a disaster. Almost every single task that the outsource vendor did, had to be re-done in house to get it done right. The outsource vendor was incompetent, dishonest, and outright unethical. Oh, and in case you're wondering: the outsource house was one of the big name-brand Chinese houses, not some fly by night operation.
My tiny team pulled out all the stops, made unbeleivable efforts, sacrificing their private lives, and somehow managed to pull it off, with minimal schedule and scope slippage. They succeeded not because of the help they were getting from the outsource vendor, but rather despite the "help" they were getting.
After the product was launched, it came time for management speechifying and self-congratulation, and what happened? Our mid-level managers declared the outsource model to be a huge success, thereby meeting their objectives and collecting their bonusses!
My team dispursed to the four winds in dusgust, some leaving the company, some transferring to other job functions, but none ever willing to go through another similar program again.
So, while this comment is admittedly based on a sample size of one, it's a pretty representative one -- big, famous silicon valley corporation using a well known, large name-brand outsource vendor to replace two-thirds of an R&D team.
And in this instance, there is absolutely NO WAY it was done to gain access to better-educated engineers. The quality of the outsource engineers was pathetic. It was done to save money, plain and simple. I happen to beleive this case is typical of what's going on throughout the high tech industry. I know of many other examples that are just as clear cut, although once again I stress that I'm talking about Hardware/China, rather than Software/India.
One more observation. The company DID save money, so in that sense, it WAS successful (for some narrow definition of the word). But only because of the behavior it elicited from the engineers on my team. I'd call it a triumph for short-term cost-saving without regard for long-term consequences. We bust our butts to help the company out of their bad management decision. Could this model produce such a "success" a second time? No way! You can only abuse people this way once. Businesses are trying to make this sort of practice S.O.P., but it won't work. Sooner or later, they'll have abused and burned out all of their best people, and then youy REALLY will have to depend on the Chinese outsource house. Then, we'll see how successful the model really is.
This assertion fails because of the market-dominating power of our largest multinationals. Example: Dell Computer. Outsources call centers to India; even tries (with varying success rates) to deceive the customer as to the call center's location. Is this necessarily reflected in the price of their PCs? No, I can find a deal with equivalent or better hardware for several hundred dollars less elsewhere; but the smaller shop is unable to leverage a brand name and exert influence over its suppliers the way Dell can, so the price of Dell's goods remains inflated.
The benefit of increased economic efficiency to the American economy is dependent upon the repatriation of corporate profits into the American workforce. Widespread unemployment and underemployment means that this is happening at a vastly decreased rate. Meanwhile, the investment money of the large corporations is going overseas, destroying the long-term growth potential of the American economy. Meanwhile, we are ourselves the beneficiaries of the market inefficiency -- it is those unnecessarily-high paychecks given to us workers that permit us to enjoy our standard of living, and while the world system will see a net gain from increased efficiencies, the American people (and the tech, law, medical, and other knowledge sectors most especially) will see a net loss as inefficiencies in our favor are removed.
Note that I'm not arguing for protectionism here. I agree that globalization is inevitable and we'll have to find some other way to deal with it. But note that our most essential manufacturing industries do not face this logic (steel tariffs anybody?). Also, I believe that our government could avoid being globalization-cheerleaders in a lot of ways by imposing taxes on goods that are produced without adhering to American standards of labor decency; we could lessen the inequalities in tax burdens between hiring American and overseas workers; we could find other ways to make investment within our borders more profitable than investment abroad.
Something else you're overlooking is (as someone else pointed out in this thread) the tendency of departing manufacturing and knowledge-product manufacturing work to leave a vacuum that is filled with an expanding services sector. That's all fine and good in terms of people having jobs, but the problem is that money spent on service sector goods is by definition money thrown down a toilet in terms of corporate reinvestment. Service sector spending is purchasing leisure, thereby decreasing the total output of the economy and acting as a drag on the reinvestment of profits (the people who sit around in newfound idleness are subsequently underproducing). This is the worst & most disingenuous part about terming fast food jobs "manufacturing" jobs -- the hamburger will get made if someone needs to eat, whether it's an engineer flipping the burger or just a tired prole cooking at home. However, if the engineer were engineering instead, the GDP would rise by that additional contribution.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
apparently in the past 5 years, the number of math majors at berkeley has gone from 200-odd to over 400.
doesn't seem to fit into the whole "us students abandoning math/science" idea.
After dropping out from college in 1990, I wound up with a computer job, then a better computer job, then an even better computer job, then, in 2000, a computer job with a startup that was so market-responsive that they realized that keeping programmers on staff was diverting money from their marketing budget, so they laid most of us off in mid-2001. By late 2001, nobody was hiring. In early 2002 I fled to Denver, took a job selling motorcycles, and got married. My spouse has convinced me that I should quit work and go to school full time; after all, you can't get hired anymore without a CS degree.
Now it looks like the job's not going to be there anymore, degree or no. And you know what? I don't want the job anymore. I can't see myself being sixty years old and still trying to wrangle code into submission in the face of a customer's false requirements and artificial deadline. Oh, I wouldn't mind settling down as a system or database admin, but if I never wrote another line of C++, I'd be happy.
So I want a job I can still do when I'm old, one where an analytical mind, good writing and oral presentation skills, and halfway-decent social skills are in demand. And since I'm sick and tired of typing IANAL on Slashdot, once I graduate, I'm taking my BS in CS and applying to law school. I'm already an anal-retentive twit; why not get paid for it?
Working with computers has taught me how to design and manipulate complex systems of rules. What is the law but a complex set of rules to be navigated? What is a contract but a specification document?
When you're in court, the scariest thing you can see at the opposition table is a calm old lawyer who looks like he's been sleeping well lately. I'm not twenty years old anymore, too stupid to value a good night's sleep. I'd rather be seventy and looking forward to half a day at the office than fifty and wondering how the hell I can get out of a career that burned me out two decades ago.
I hope for your sake you didn't bother reading this. I respect programming, I really do. I can remember a day when I got a big woody at the chance to code something. Not anymore. Tastes change; passions change. And sometimes the way you find meaning in your work, well, that's got to change, too.
This is not my sandwich.
Some economists point fingers at the payroll tax that companies have to pay on their employee's salary. Because income tax has gone down over the past several years, payroll tax has come up, and is now equivalent to income tax. This of course makes it harder on corporations to hire people cause they gotta pay the huge tax on the CEO's paycheck, which could probably pay 3 or 4 salaries of typical worker drones.
help a poor college grad get a free Mac Mini
A company I worked at about six or seven years ago was vigorously lobbying the local universities' Computer Science departments to modify their curricula to teach practical skills, such as C++, Java, systems engineering, software configuration management concepts, concepts of transactions, databases, etc. Our point was that their graduates would be better served, get more bang for their tuition buck, and would have better chances at employment right after graduation if the curricula were more practical. The universities steadfastly refused, insisting instead to continue teaching CS students essentially nothing more than problem-solving with useless and/or home-grown languages.
it took me an extra semester to graduate - i got depressed and stopped doing my work for a semester. so now i'm working for the university. i feel really lucky to even have a job, even if it's only a temporary position. i'm not really sure what i'm doing come july when my appointment ends. i'm not all too optimistic about finding anything anywhere else; i'm mainly holding onto the hope that i'll be offered a more long-term position here. we'll see...
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.