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Do Businesses Really Need to Hire CS Majors? (cio.com)
A new article in CIO magazine argues that when it comes to computer science, "few of us really need much of any of it." Slashdot reader itwbennett offers this summary:
At the heart of the matter is the fact that most businesses don't really need programmers to be deep thinkers. For them, it's "just as worthwhile to hire someone from a physics lab who just used Python to massage some data streams from an instrument. They can learn the shallow details just as readily as the CS genius," according to the article.
CIO's anonymous author promises an incomplete list of "why we may be better off ignoring CS majors." Some of the highlights:
CIO's anonymous author promises an incomplete list of "why we may be better off ignoring CS majors." Some of the highlights:
- Theory distracts and confuses. "Many computer scientists are mathematicians at heart and the theorem-obsessed mindset permeates the discipline."
- Academic languages are rarely used. "...the academy breeds snobbery and a love for arcane solutions."
- Many CS professors are mathematicians, not programmers. "One of the dirty secrets about most computer science departments is that most of the professors can't program computers. Their real job is giving lectures and wrangling grants...."
- Many required subjects are rarely used. "...it's too bad few of us use many data structures any more."
- Institutions breed arrogance. "...the very nature of academic degrees are designed to give graduates the ability to argue one's superiority with authority. "
- Many modern skills are ignored. "If you want to understand Node.js, React, game design or cloud computation, you'll find very little of it in the average curriculum... It's very common for computer science departments to produce deep thinkers who understand some of the fundamental challenges without any shallow knowledge of the details that dominate the average employee's day."
"It's not that CS degrees are bad," the article concludes. "It's just that they're not going to speak to the problems that most of us need to solve."
This sounds like it was written by a non-CS major who has tied all their business processes to wonky VBA macro laden Excel workbooks.
I think he's wrong about a lot of his facts. At least, all the CS professors I've met can program.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
So basically this magazine allowed an anonymous troll to write a flame bait piece for them. What an outstanding feat of journalism!
Sure, there are probably a lot of instances where someone with a degree is overkill for the job, but this disdain for education is appalling. I wish the anonymous coward (and in this case it is not some cute ./ term but the very definition of the words) would tell us where he works so I can avoid hiring their services forever.
"I don't want to pay for people who understand what they're doing."
Another success without college article, usually writen by someone who did not go to college. Sure, there are auto didacts able to learn good software engineering principles on their own, but few possess the necessary self discipline. To learn to think you need to hang out with thinkers. To learn a subject well it helps enormously to have good teachers. To learn discipline it helps to have structure. Nothing beats college for that, it's an opportunity you should seize if you possibly can.
Never mind the parities, networking and abundant supply of premium specimens of the opposite sex.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
It's almost comical just how false most of these stereotypes and arguments are.
1) Knowing lots of theory allows you to approach a problem from multiple possible analytical angles. Lacking that kind of critical thinking will make you an excellent drone employee who can execute orders given by smarter people.
2) I take issue with "rarely used." I know CS people love their esoteric languages, but they are hardly the norm for example code.
3) I don't think I've met a single CS professor who couldn't write code.
4) Data structures? You use them all the fucking time. ALL THE TIME. You just don't know it because someone made it idiot-proof, so now even your dumb ass can use them.
5) There may be some truth to credentials making people more confident, but the same could be said of anyone with any recognized accreditation. Furthermore, I feel like this applies more to businesspeople than scientists.
6) There's a reason you don't find highly-specific industry trending software tools being taught in "the average cirriculum." It's the same reason you learn to dribble a basketball before you learn to dunk: fundamentals.
The highlights read like garbage written for adult children.
"It's not that CS degrees are bad, it's just that they're not going to speak to the problems that most of us need to solve."
What is that problem you need to solve? How to appear to be doing your job when you are actually laying waste to your company's future?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Clickbait aimed at the hard of thinking
When a headline asks a question, the sensible answer is always a resounding No.
The whole point of open source is that the software is already written. Just need to put it together like Lego blocks. CS Major won't help. Outsource the development and it will be done in no time.
Have you ever written any software?
If not, don't talk about what you don't understand.
If so, why don't you "put it together like Lego blocks" yourself and save the trouble and cost of outsourcing?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
While I would want evidence a humanities graduate can cope with the logic and other demands of programming, I do agree that this is hardly news.
People under 35 or so don't seem to realise how rare university degrees used to be. Some of the best programmers I've known didn't go to university. All of the best programmers I've known didn't get a degree in Computer Science.
That doesn't mean a CS degree is worthless. Any technical degree has merit. It just doesn't mean they're any good at delivering working software in a business environment, which is where the majority of programming jobs lie.
I have no objection to hiring CS grads but it's fucking lunacy to require it.
Yes, they probably are. That 5% is what the doctors spend so many years training for. It's great you've never had anything serious. One day, you might do. Should that happen, be sure to thank the doctors who save your life.
The sharpest programmers I've worked with almost all started programming before they graduated high school. They went on to do a variety of majors, a few doing CS, most of them mathematics, EE, physics or chemistry. Point is, they combined a solid grounding in science and mathematics with a passion for programming. I know a few great programmers who are largely self-taught without the benefit of a degree in a related field, but they are very rare.
For some time, CS majors might not have been the best choice for programmers, but not for the reasons mentioned in that CIO magazine, but because the IT job market was red hot, and CS drew in many students without a real passion for the subject.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
It's more likely that it was written by someone with an MBA who adheres to the typical MBA mantra of improving the bottom line by replacing better paid, experienced employees in favor of inexperienced people who accept far less than the market rate for the position. They tend to be almost as cult-like as the anti-vax crowd, latching onto any and every justification for their belief regardless of how ridiculous or misinformed it may be.
I'm old enough that when I got into programming, CS degrees weren't really that common. Most companies were hiring programmers by giving aptitude tests and training people in house. I eventually did end up going for a university degree, after I had been programing for about 10 years, but dropped out after my third year because there was little relevant to the work I was actually doing and the skills I actually needed. For a lot of projects I worked on, being a virtuoso programmer was a lot less important than subject matter expertise. At one time most accounting software was written by people who were accountants that were trained in programming as a sideline.
I've found CS degrees are analogous to music degrees. Having a advanced degree in music doesn't make you Jimi Hendrix, but on the other hand if you want to be a symphony orchestra conductor or write arrangements, you're probably not going to get too far without one. But I've certainly met plenty of musicians with advanced music degrees who could barely play their instruments. And I've met plenty of terrific musicians who have had no formal training at all.
Likewise, there are talented programmers with CS degrees, but a CS degree is not a guarantee of talent. And there are plenty of talented programmers with no degree at all.
Personally, my programming career would have gone just fine if I'd never gotten anywhere near a university, but then, I spent most of it in corporate IT. I wouldn't have a clue where to start writing a search engine, but then, it's highly unlikely I'd ever have been asked to write one.
Whether you need CS majors or not depends on the work you need to have done. If you're going to develop compilers and OS's, then yeah, probably a good idea. If you're doing routine business applications, then probably not so much.
He sounds to me like he recommended hiring physicists for an engineering role, because he's unaware that software engineering and systems engineering exist. He thinks computer science is supposed to be programming.
Outside the academic ivory tower
I've come to the conclusion that anyone using the phrase "ivory tower" is probably an idiot with a chip on their shoulder.
we write programs to run on REAL hardware today
Well done you understand your job. However it's the height of arrogance to assume that because you don't understand academic jobs that they're somehow worthless.
Hell, it was just a six years ago that Bjarne Stroustrup was so far out-of-touch with modern hardware and its L1 cache that he was surprised to learn that doubly linked lists give shitty cache usage.
It takes a special kind of arrogant to take someone who is telling people why a technique is bad and go herp derp he's a stupid he doesn't know its bad.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I've worked with these scientists that need a little programming. It makes no one happy, the programming is lousy and the scientist is dismayed at not doing more science. I've got one guy who says "I wrote all the code, I just need you guys to clean it up and integrate it into your stuff", or "why are you designing that piece, I already wrote it!"
Let me tell you, some of the worst programmers out there are physicists. It sometimes seems like they even forget their math as they complain that their exponential time algorithm takes too long to run.