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A Commencement Speech For 2013 CS Majors
blackbearnh writes "Most commencement speeches are long on platitudes and short on practical advice. O'Reilly blogger James Turner has tailored a speech aimed specifically at the current batch of graduating CS majors. Among the advice that the 35-year industry veteran offers are to find a small company for your first job, but not one that is going to burn you out. Also, keep learning new things, but don't fall into the trap of learning the flavor of the day technology. Quoting: 'Being passionate about software is critical to being successful, because the field is a constantly moving target. What will net you $130K today will be done by junior programmers in five years, and unless you're constantly adding new tools to your belt, you’re going to find yourself priced out of the market. ... You are rarely going to get an opportunity to have your current employer pay for you to learn things, so learn them on your own and be in a position to leverage the skills when a new project comes along. But if you have a passion for technology, you'll already be doing it, and enjoying it without needing me to tell you to."
Be resourceful. Find ways to do your job without complaint or constantly and chronically asking for the next task to be done.
Do these two things and your will be prosperous.
(sits down to great cheers for having ended the speech in 30 seconds)
In the past 10 years how many CS graduated did you have to fire/have had fired because of their inability to learn something new? (i.e. because they need classes to hold their hands). Parent's shouldn't push their kids into a field about which the kids have no passion.
find a small company for your first job, but not one that is going to burn you out.
It may be easier to prove that unicorns exist...
I think the key is to know when to get out... of course there can be other reasons for staying.
See if you don't care about salary when you have a spouse and four kids to feed. And medical bills. And a mortgage. I'd say the majority of us in the software development and/or computer science would work different jobs if we didn't have these practical considerations. O'Reilly's speech was probably directed at the majority of people like us/you, not the rare few who can afford to go decades without balancing a desire for interesting work with a need to provide for one's family.
Also, you may find that unchallenging implies uninteresting. So, unless you want to be bored, you probably can't avoid challenge.
You have several million other people with cs degrees out there right now. Most of the ones from last year still don't have jobs. Let alone in computers...
In the USA, the overall unemployment rate is around 8%. For computer programmers it is less than 4%. Stop whining.
I'm sorry, but this is the vague timeless advice that isn't targeting the class of 2013. It gives no information that is insightful for today's graduates that wasn't also true for the last 30 years.
Even start-up / small companies have been an aspect of the industry since... what? The 80's? Before that you needed some capital just to afford a computer.
Why doesn't he address the upcoming death of the desktop? That China and India are developing a middle class and that China is graduating more engineers than the USA has citizens? The effects of large corporations steering large OSS projects into the ground? That the hardware has bottomed out and full computers only cost you $30. What about the consolidation of the Internet? Or how about the war on general computing? I mean, these are computer science majors, I imagine it's kind of a thing for them.
I don't know that I'd say that. Honestly, software engineering broke off from computer science for precisely that reason. I would like to see CS curriculum stay theoretical, and leave the implementation to software engineering degree programs.
So many schools these days are dropping CS altogether and replacing it with software engineering, I would have to say that what you're asking for is effectively already happening.
So don't have 4 kids and a mortgage you can't afford?
Also, you may find that unchallenging implies uninteresting. So, unless you want to be bored, you probably can't avoid challenge.
Which is why so many academics wind up staying in academia. It's not just those who "can't do" that teach, but those who find what the job market wants them to do uninteresting. Fortunately, I have a career in Computer Grahpics, which is challenging but ultimately does not pay as well as many generic software engineering jobs. I will never strike it rich, but at least I am doing something that I love.
I've been an IT professional since '95. Unix admin / DBA / network admin / SAN admin / Release Engineer / etc. etc. This advice really speaks to my career. You have to have passion for technology and you have to be willing to learn new things on your own. I run into so many people who want nothing to do with technology when they go home. I feel they are in the wrong industry.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Colleges do pump out a lot of trash, but that's the same in any field
Colleges are pumping out more trash than usual because they're letting in more trash than usual.
All those imbeciles you're referring to are now packed into your HR & Accounting departments.
Plenty have jobs as code monkeys, it seems. It's honestly frustrating to see HR idiots (even ones who work in small or medium sized companies) not hire people simply because they don't have degrees rather than take the time to test their skills a bit (but HR idiots can't do that, anyway).
Wow. At least when I graduated a CS degree wasn't exactly an easy one to get. It doesn't mean that everyone holding a CS degree is automatically a better candidate than everyone who doesn't have one, nor does it mean that they are good candidate for a given position. It at least used to mean that they have a pretty good understanding of how computers and operating systems work, that they have decent (if not great) math skills, that they have some ability to complete a project, work with others, and have reasonable writing skills.
Usually when I'm looking for people I'll state that a computer science degree is preferred. That has not stopped me from hiring people without CS degrees though I think pretty much everyone I've hired (as a developer) has had some degree.
People working on minimum wage can afford to support themselves and pay rent. Someone with a degree in Computer Science ought to be smart enough to do the same with a salary based job, and to live within their means; otherwise, I sort of doubt the legitimacy of their degree :P
Salary is but one consideration and high paying + challenging is not mutually exclusive.
I deliberately left a higher paying job for a non-profit even though I had a mortgage and two kids. Ultimately I'm happier for it even though I know I'd be making more money if I had stayed where I was. The work wouldn't be nearly as fulfilling or challenging. Still I'm not exactly poor and I'm content with my pay.
and the same people think CS = IT work
now CS is more on the programming side. But on the other side not only is there some skills that need to be very hands on Like Cisco / networking they have certs that you need to know stuff and do it in a real IT lab setting. Also others parts like desktops / servers 4 years pure class room is extreme over kill.
research and theory = a poor setting to learn job skills and people in that setting may just do the min to pass and you can really see that in the filler and fluff classes.
I don't know how many times I can stress this. Computer Science is not supposed to teach trade skills, there are specialized programs such as software engineering for that purpose. At my school, many of the students who could not hack theory quickly dropped out of computer science and enrolled in either information systems or software engineering; the way it should be.
i thought commencement was supposed to be about life, the universe, and everything (TM).
here i come to find out it's supposed to be career advice like you'd find on any thrid rate jobs website.
thanks!!!! im glad i will spend 40 years with my head down in a cubicle, never thinking, never questioning, never acting on anything other than my desire to have a shit hot career and a fuckton of money.
i mean, that's what "success" is, right?
i'm pretty sure Steve Jobs book was full of practical, sensible stuff like that.
“A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”
The question is, how to effectively communicate this to clients.
"What will net you $130K today will be done by junior programmers in five years"
That really depends on why you're getting paid a premium. Is it because you have experience with the current "hot thing", or is it because you are capable of crafting correct, performant and elegant solutions to hard problems? If it's the latter, then that probably won't be "done by junior programmers in five years".
I have most certainly. Nobody really needs luxuries like cable, cell phones, etc... If you live within your means, it is very easy. In fact, I do not own a cell phone to this day. Once upon a time, people realized what was a luxury, and what was really necessary to support oneself. Those days are over, it seems :-\
Wow, for a thread about higher education, this has devolved into grade school antics.
Seriously though, it would be wise to wait until you have (if ever) a well-paying job before starting such a large family. If you have no interest in high-paying work, then the obvious solution would be not to start a family you cannot afford to support. I know it sounds cold, but the harsh reality is people overestimate their earnings potential and it leads to bad things in the future. Look at the housing crisis, there is blame to spread among all parties involved, but part of the problem was people buying into houses they honestly could not afford and banks knowingly allowing this.
I have no plans to ever pursue a high paying job, I like research and I am happy living a lower quality of life than my more money conscious peers.
$15080 in pre-tax income is what a minimum wage worker sees in one year.
This convenient tool that Google pointed me towards suggests that a person with such an income, assuming they have no other monthly debt, and can secure the all-time lowest 30 year fixed mortgage APR of 3.31%, and have no property taxes or homeowner insurance to deal with (all very generous, even unrealistic assumptions), an aggressive house purchase would be $94,571.08. A conservative one would be $80242.13. Of course, with realistic figures used in place of those generous ones (4% APR, $3k/year tax, $300/year insurance), you'd be looking at a house in the $16k-$29k range.
Basically, that rules out home ownership for any one making minimum wage. To be fair, you did say rent. But even renting anymore more than a room in an apartment would be difficult. Minimum wage works out to $1256.67/month, and the old maxim is to never spend more than a quarter of one's monthly income on rent. That would bring us to $314.17/month, which is really unlikely to even pay for a room in a shared apartment, at least in any coastal state.
I've managed to be able to pay rent making even less than minimum wage. But I was living off a potato a day at the time, and the rent was paid late more often than not. Most people would agree that this is no way to live in a civilized country. There's a difference between having a cell phone and maintaining an adequate diet.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Yeah - I managed to pay rent making minimum wage myself, and a part time job to boot, but the place I lived in was a former drug dealer's flat (found crack paraphanalia under the fireplace grate) three doors down from the soup kitchen and had gunfire daily as entertainment, and we crammed 3 people into a 1 "bedroom" apartment (technically it had zero) and ate a LOT of ramen, potatoes, eggs (they were dirt cheap at the time), and white bread. I scraped by on about $15-20 a month on food (when ramen packets went on sale for 5 cents each we bought 600). No car, biked, walked, or took the bus everywhere. I budgeted like mad and always paid the rent on time, but it was hard living.
Now I hire people from the shelter to do my yard work and pay them nearly twice minimum wage. Most of them can't get real work due to felonies on their records and my seasonal allergies kill me this time of year, so they want to work, I am willing to pay for a good job done, win-win (not reported as income, I'm sure, but they feel better about it than panhandling).
I didn't. I can afford them. It's just expensive, which limits my job choices.
Trading away personal freedom for the happiness / well-being of one's family is part of being a big boy.