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Computer Science Major Is Cool Again
netbuzz sends along a piece from Network World reporting that the number of computer science majors enrolled at US universities increased for the first time in six years, according to new survey data out this morning. The Taulbee Study found that the number of undergraduates signed up as computer science majors rose 8% last year. The survey was conducted last fall, just as the economic downturn started to bite. The article notes the daunting competition for positions at top universities: Carnegie Mellon University received 2,600 applications for 130 undergrad spots, and 1,400 for 26 PhD slots. "...the popularity of computer science majors among college freshmen and sophomores is because IT has better job prospects than other specialties, especially in light of the global economic downturn. ... The latest unemployment numbers for 2008 for computer software engineers is 1.6%... That's beyond full employment. ... The demand for tech jobs may rise further thanks to the Obama Administration's stimulus package, which could create nearly 1 million new tech jobs."
the popularity of computer science majors among college freshmen and sophomores is because IT has better job prospects than other specialties
How does that make it cool? It sounds more like desperation.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
These ain't programmers, nor are they REAL "Software Engineers", the article writers are throwing Project Managers and Software Architects into the mix to get their numbers:
In other words, for the type of *real programmer* who isn't on a team and does everything from Requirements Gathering to QA (and everything in between) your job is STILL threatened by outsourcing. But the schools have finally figured that out, so instead of teaching basic concepts like data mining and programming, they're teaching people to be managers right out of the box. Dilbert Principle, here we come.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Now that the financial industry is in shambles (what do they produce, again?) the only way to make bank without sacrificing the 8 to 12 years of your youth to med school or law school is engineering. And since most people are now familiar with computers, software engineering seems more accessible.
This makes perfect sense. Engineers make more money than any other Bachelors degrees can get you. Many students don't realize that it is damn hard to get an engineering degree compared to other degrees, though. At least, that's true of good colleges.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Harsha says computer science majors are critical for the U.S. economy because their training provides them with computational thinking and problem solving skills that they can deploy in any industry.
So does: physics, chemistry, engineering, math, accounting....
"The primary reason for the downturn in computer science majors was the erroneous fear that everything was being outsourced to India, which we know is not true," says Prof. Jerry Luftman, executive director of the School of Technology Management at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J.
Really? Tell that to IBM.
The lobbying group TechAmerica says computer software engineering and computer systems design are the fastest-growing high tech jobs, even in the fourth quarter of 2008.
Who is this "TechAmerica"? The lobbying group TechAmerica says computer software engineering and computer systems design are the fastest-growing high tech jobs, even in the fourth quarter of 2008. Oh, I see. So, corps want more H1-Bs, I take it and they're setting up the public opinion to be more open to it in these troubling times.
The whole article keeps mentioning "IT","IT","IT" and only once did they say something mobile devices. I wish they would say exactly what area of IT is booming.
This article is nothing but fluff.
I only skimmed the article, but I never saw any mention what's happening to CS enrollment relative to *other* departments. It was my understanding that there is a general increase in college/grad enrollment in most departments when the economy dips.
What a spin piece.
CS majors had plummeted to near extinction over the past decade.
Given the market is still there, the stats had nowhere to go but up out of sheer law of averages.
Additionally, major does not necessarily mean field. People might be going into the major to gain greater understanding of the tools used by even the burger flippers today.
The fact that it's math and logic heavy makes it look better on a resume than east asian studies.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Picking a major, especially an intensive one like CS, based on current employment statistics, that is.
I feel for the hotshot larval geek that's been programming since he was in the single digits, knows 3-4 operating systems, and can put together a computer in 15 minutes while getting a blowjob and having a gun pointed at his head, who is going to enroll in a CS program and find out he knows fuckall about "computer science."
Lest I get modded down for being an elitist prick, I'm not bashing those kids. I *am* one (although too old to be a kid). It's all downhill from Discrete Math...
We on Slashdot think so?
Me: "I'm sorry Miss, but there will be no cutting."
She: "But Dmomo, I don't just want to be with your CS Degree, I love you for you. Let me push your stack."
Me: "Typical story. Get to the end of the Lady Queue... I'm a FIFO man"
She: "Swoon"
That's because economist-bureaucrats have defined a certain level of unemployment as "full employment". They figure you're always going to have some people who are out of work... so they don't count that many of them.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
the number of computer science majors enrolled at US universities increased for the first time in six years
Well, I guess it HAD to increase sometime. There's a financial saying that applies here, "Even a dead cat will bounce if you drop it from a great height."
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
WTF? Really? Where?
McDonalds. To save money, they are no longer purchasing specialized cash registers with individual buttons per item. Going forward, a new generation of tech-savvy employees will have to "program" the register to display the order price.
Full employment is defined as around 5% unemployment. This is made up of frictional unemployment, people between jobs or looking for their first one, structural unemployment, people whose skills are obsolete, and cyclical unemployment, unemployment due to the ebb and flow of the business cycle.
All your base are belong to Wii.
I love learning but am sick of institutionalized education. The problem is the right way to do education is incredibly expensive, incredibly time-consuming, but if we had proper priorities as a society, would be seen as completely worth it. At this point, only idiots or saints would go into a career in education. There's no money in it, and I'm not talking about enough money to become a rich bastard, I'm talking about enough money to avoid poverty.
I'm not quite sure what the right solution is yet but I'm wondering if it might not be a good idea to start on the Young Lady's Primer. We've certainly made some advancements on the sort of technology that would be required.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
While interest in the field is good, there are still some major barriers to entry that need to be considered.
1. Unlike previous downturns, we currently have tons of IT/CS people out of work. I'm very lucky to have work; according to all my colleagues, hiring is extremely limited, especially in large public companies. In addition, competition for these jobs is incredibly tough.
2. Outsourcing has not gone away. IBM's a perfect example, as are many of the other professional services firms. India is rapidly moving up the food chain, and even advanced dev jobs are moving elsewhere very quickly. The best strategy is to get involved with a small company who doesn't have the resources to manage an outsourcing engagement.
3. A corollary to #2 - Lots of companies are "discovering" they don't need an IT department anymore. Most of the programming jobs will be for vendors, if the whole "cloud computing" fad turns out to be more than a fad.
4. Don't assume you can choose where you work, if that's important to you. Companies are shifting their support functions to cheaper locations within the US, so keep that in mind unless you don't care about living in Boston vs. Omaha.
So, as always IT and programming are fun fields to be in, but just keep in mind that the employment prospects are still unstable. If you're the kind who doesn't mind bouncing from one 6-month contract to another, you'll do fine. Full time work might be harder to come by.
i don't even want to begin to think about LIFO in a sexual context
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Maybe so, but I have to get to work, so if you don't mind, I'd appreciate it if you could go ahead and put $20 on pump #3
Interesting statistic in that I am about to get laid off (BSCS with 15+ years of experience), along with four other programmers (two already gone), two software QA, a manager, and two tech support people. I've already interviewed with one company over a week and a half ago and haven't heard back yet. I heard through an acquaintance that the company's HR was overwhelmed with the number of applicants. It feels kind of like the government's inflation rate statistic; the annual retported number has been real low for the last decade in spite of very noticebale changes at the checkouts.
man, where is my +1 awesome.... ;) Need we remind people of how many movies are made about our jobs...hackers, sneakers, swordfish, several TV channels, Entire clothing lines, not to mention the gadgets we were ridiculed for carrying around 10-20 years ago are the fashion accessories of today. Ya, we are not cool...
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
I have been programming since I was 8 years old (made a kick ass dog racing game in 2nd grade), but decided to be a philosophy major at UCLA instead of a CS major. The best decision I ever made. My philosophy training (I specialized in formal logic theory) has helped my programming more than any CS class would have. A good programmer needs to be able to teach themselves, or they will be obsolete almost immediately. Learning how to use logic and transform abstract human concepts into a formal logic representation is the true base skill for programmers.
It worked out for me.... 4 years removed from graduation, I have a great programming job that I love, making excellent money, and happy as can be.
Um, if 1.6% or more of all CS people are unemployed, I think it's weird to say that's "beyond full employment." How is it that you can even be beyond full employment? Weird! LOL
In economics full employment is defined as an unemployment rate of between 2 and 7%.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The problem with new CS/IT grads is that they mostly do not know how to design software or even how a computer works at a basic level. In the last ten or more years most of these computer science majors are familiar with Java but know no assembly and very little C and have more training in Web design than in systems analysis.
This, however, works well for me. I work as a consultant that is parachuted into projects that are past due and over budget and fix them. True, I have thirty years of experience and that can not be duplicated in four years of college, but I mostly fix very basic mistakes made by people that are ignorant of the technology or the methodology.
Hopefully the universities and colleges will start teaching the basics (especially documentation) and train truly professional IT people. It's frustrating and unnerving to have someone who does Visual Basic Scripts in Excel call themselves a software engineer and are in charge of a large ERP project.
With the finance industry devastated after it was revealed the entire investment market is a giant shell game, intelligent underachievers that like playing with numbers flock to universities in search of other career paths where they've been lead to believe they can make millions of dollars doing nothing.
CS majors were always cool.
No. They were only cool when they were allowed entry into the air conditioned server room.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Agreed. In a Venn diagram of who would benefit the most from a simpler tax code and those who are in the position to make that a reality, there's a tiny bit of overlap with maybe two dudes in it.
I traded all my mod points for these magic beans.
I don't think I want to be associated with Swordfish. You should have mentioned Office Space, though.
IIRC, Microsoft is the largest H-1B employer in the United States. Microsoft has publicly (and repeatedly) stated that they do not maintain separate salary tracks for their foreign employees - that is, they pay foreigners the exact same amount they could pay someone born in the United States.
Payroll statistics are made available to the DHS/USCIS and these statistics corroborate Microsoft's statements.
So, now that you understand that there isn't some great demon lurking across the border waiting to devour your jobs and your womenfolk, you have the opportunity (and, from your outburst, the free time) to investigate why Americans aren't as competitive in the same jobs as someone from another country.
Here's a hint: it might start with the fact that you automatically blame others for your own problems.
and will always be. It is not, however, always popular. To the extent CS attracts people who are not interested in Computers, or Science, but only better employment prospects, that is a shame. Why can't they study MIS or art history or something?
One bright young spark was emphatic that he was going to do IT and become rich - IT, he said, was only going to continue growing. Fair enough. But this was 1998, and by the time he graduated in 2002, the dot-com bubble was over and suddenly employment opportunities for CSIT people were much more scarce.
I, on the other hand, chose my degree not on the basis of its potential remuneration, but solely because I loved engineering (of the non-software kind) and I wanted to spend my life building cool shit. I wonder how many people signed up for IT expecting to be Bill Gates, only to find that they were condemned to spend their time developing webpages for the local kennel club.
Seriously, kids - a job that makes scads of money may never come your way, but it's not hard to get a job that brings you happiness and satisfaction. If you get a job that you truly enjoy, you'll never work again.
Hell, I spent my day putting together RC helicopters to make robots of out - I can't believe they PAY me to do that.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Right, someone just "made it up" after decades of scientific study.
The idea here is that "full employment" is the condition where there's a job available for everyone who wants to work at the prevailing wage. There's still unemployment in that situation, because it takes time to fill positions. If you're given 2 week's notice that your position is being eliminated, and you get multiple leads and go on several interviews in that time (as happened in my last gig), and you know what your new job is by you last day on the current one, you're still going to be out of work for a while. This is the "frictional cost" of changes. More employers hiring can't possibly reduce this.
"Beyond full employment" means there are more jobs than workers. Yes, people are still unemployed for periods beween jobs even when there are more jobs than workers. No, that's not a vast government conspiracy.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Why would anyone pick up a CS degree to become an IT guy? It seems like complete overkill. I'm doing CS and Comp Engr and I know for a fact that that is exactly what I _don't_ want to do.
BSD is for people who love Unix, Linux is for people who hate Microsoft.
I'd far rather have someone from another country here doing the work here than just having the work go to another country.
Don't think it can't happen.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The United States was built and paid for with the blood, sweat, tears, and even the lives of immigrants. Ninety-nine percent of every citizen's great grandparents, great-great grandparents etc. came to the U.S. from another country. Personally, I think we should welcome talented and hard working people in to the U.S., naturalize them, and make them pay income taxes like everyone else.
Now the thing about H-1B visa holders is that they do pay taxes, and they contribute to our nation's economy. There are countless numbers of problems in the modern-day United States. A good example is the number of people who expect a handout, and abuse the welfare system. A better example is giving hand-outs to multi-national banks and corporations. Some of these banks and companies are guilty of outright fraud; others should have known better before signing off on questionable credit lines, loans, and mortgages. Yet the worst are companies who cannot learn to compete on a global scale with Japan, North Korea, and China. Instead, our government throws away the peoples' tax dollars, giving it out to these companies whom never learned their lessons from their failures. Most of them probably have not even changed their business strategies and business models to better compete globally, it is business as usual.
You may see H-1B visa holders as a problem, but in reality, it is a step in the right direction to competing in a global market. Illegal immigrants are not really a problem either, many of them provide a service doing hard manual labor that no American would do for the same pay. The REAL problem with illegal immigrant workers is income tax and minimum wage. Do away with minimum wage and tax immigrant workers, and that problem is solved. Some on the left side of the political fence may think this cruel and unusual, but that would be a truly free market for jobs. At least illegal immigrant workers do not expect a freaking handout, because they feel entitled to an easy job with great pay and benefits.
You on the other hand, born in the U.S.A. and for some reason you feel entitled to a good paying job with great benefits. Why?
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
When you are doing reading corporate propaganda from a lobbyist group. You might want to take a look at comments from real IT pros:
http://techtoil.org/wiki/doku.php?id=articles:news_and_commentary
A BSCS is almost as difficult as a degree in engineering, but it's as worthless as a degree in Liberal Arts.
Look at the job ads, employers don't give a damn about your silly BSCS, they want experience - many years of professional, verifiable, recent experience, and in many different technologies, and no jobs have the same requirements.
Maybe there are few slashdot readers, who don't live in caves, who may have noticed that practically ever major tech employer has been laying workers by the thousands - especially US IT workers. And yet you are going to believe this corporate sponsored bullshit? You have my pity.