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."

Comments

My commencement address

[Latent Heat]

Show up to work. 99 percent of success is being there.

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)

Re:My commencement address

[Jockle]

6: Have dummy Facebook and E-mail accounts at the ready. Employers will ask for username/PW access just so they can go through everything.

Run away from jobs like that, if at all possible.

Goes along with my poll:

[agapeton]

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.

Re:Goes along with my poll:

[HeckRuler]

Well yeah they push STEM, that's where the job/money/need is. Duh.

As much as people would like to have a "classic" education and debate what the Greeks thought about spheres, it turns out that we need an educated workforce to function as a nation. I'd like to play games all day, but launching Kerbals to the moon won't pay the bills.

The big question is CAN you even foster the sort of passion that helps people excel at STEM careers? If yes, then keep on pushing. If no, then we'll get a lot of mediocre programmers with a passion for philosophy. And hey, that's not a bad thing. It still pays the bills.

A massive problem with colleges is that too many people are getting worthless degrees and can't get work out of college and are slung with hideous crushing debt. It used to be that having ANY degree would land you a cooshy job. Those days are over. (Hell, it used to be being able to afford college meant that daddy would line you up a cooshy job, but thankfully those days are over too).

I'm still a big fan of artists, but I don't think they really need to go to college. And we still need a couple History/Philosophy/English majors. Just not this many.

Re:Goes along with my poll:

[Jockle]

it turns out that we need an educated workforce to function as a nation

But that's exactly what we're not getting. Instead, we get rote memorization drones who think they're intelligent because they graduated from our lousy public schools with good grades, and then those people go on to be accepted into a degree mill that will drain them of any and all money they or the government may have. Alternatively, they may go to one of those 'good' colleges, but they'll come out with nearly zero practical skills because they're just rote memorization drones anyway.

Re:Goes along with my poll:

[burningcpu]

I'm working with a masters in a STEM field (Chemistry), and I make about 60% of the salary of the HR drone who happens to have a degree in History. The job market is so shitty for new grads in science that my company is starting chemists with undergraduate degrees at $13 an hour. This is not atypical for the industry, at least in my state. Trust me, I've been looking.

My friends that went into the trades already have houses and are making families. Those of us that went into science are living with roommates and scrounging by like we're 20 well into our 30's.

Don't get me wrong. There still are some good jobs out there. But similarly to what apparently (from my reading of slashdot) is going on in the software field, these positions require 15 years experience in a technique that is 12 years old.

That $13 an hour job I was talking about earlier? We received 63 resumes for the position. 63. The pay was listed. As was weekend work and mandatory overtime required.

Another interesting tidbit is that as health insurance continues to become a larger portion of the cost of the employee, the employers are experiencing a higher sunk cost per worker, shifting the sweet spot of overtime versus staffing up to higher OT values. My lab has cut two positions and moved to mandatory 45 hour base weeks, with mandatory additional overtime up to 55 hours.

The number of part time positions that are capped at 39 hours per week are also increasing.

Go into a trade. It isn't for dummies. Ignore your cultural bias.

Re:$130k a year?!

[DoofusOfDeath]

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.

Re:Reality

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Targetting 2013?

[HeckRuler]

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.

Re:and schools need to be more trades / tech schoo

[Kaldaien]

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.

Re:Small companies

[David_Hart]

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.

- Find a mature small to medium sized company with low turnover for your first job. It's a bonus if they are about to launch a new project using new technology. If you show enough enthusiasm, they'll happily throw you on it as a resource.

What you want to get from your first job is a mentor who has been in the industry for a while and who is a professional. Someone who takes their work seriously and who isn't there just for a paycheck. Someone who will show you the ropes.

I worked for a mature medium sized Oil Company for my first job. I learned how to be an IT professional, not just an IT worker, from my more experienced co-workers.

true... true

[dfn5]

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.

and the same people think CS = IT work

[Joe_Dragon]

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.

Re: research and theory = a poor setting to learn

[Kaldaien]

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.

wow, how inspiring

[decora]

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.

disagree with this:

[buddyglass]

"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".