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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.
Is this written by some guy that can't get a programming job because he doesn't have a degree?
"Wah, they're all elitist nerds. Now I have to write for this stupid website to pay rent. They're the stupid ones, not me! Why don't I get paid $200k a year? Wahh!"
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.
From my standpoint, this is an earmark of of the end of IT as a professional specialty.
At this point technicians are treated as hourly workers- if they exist at all. The word "engineer" is being banished from the IT profession. Support is by phone script. The network is built on appliances. Configurations done by subcontractors. Job qualifications require education over experience. Certifications are required- but are generally useless without a degree.
Programmers are shuffled in and out on contract....code is undocumented. Competence is un-rewarded.
And management doesn't understand the technology with a mentality that says: "Do the minimum possible to get a short term result".
The net result is lots of titles like "Network Manager"... "Network Architect"... "Vice President of Information Systems".... ETC.
And yet none of these people have functional knowledge of real practical networking or server administration. They function as gateways to subcontractors, some of which follow the executive from job to job, and the officer level of the company is so ignorant of the issues involved that it continues.
Then there's the "Cloud".
It's the biggest ripoff any company can be subjected to. A multi-layer IT staff that only administrates the actions of sub-contractors. And yet while this management structure can be three layers deep- it does nothing, presents no skill set, and is useless without the added expense of subcontractors which provide "IT Expertise" as a service. And the company... isn't even in control of it's own data. It's security and availability is now preserved by a third party company whose interest is singularly profit.
So when "CIO Magazine" writes an article saying that CS majors are not needed all I can do is chuckle.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
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.
This is an open secret that's been known for decades. The best minds that I've work with are almost invariably from other majors. The sharpest programmer that I know came out of the music department. In most positions, technical skills represent about 1/5 of what you need to do a job. Those other 4/5 matter a whole lot. It's easier to teach a humanities person some technical skills than it is to teach a technical person humanities.
The whole point of open source is that the software is already written. Just need to put it together like Lego blocks.
Software development will soon be replaced by automated AI Blockchain technology, which googles and copies & pastes code blocks from Stackoverflow according to the natural language that you speak to Alexa.
There will be no need to understand what gets copied . . . the Blockchain AI will understand it for you!
. . . and then Alexa will say, "Thank you for ordering an Obamacare Website!"
"Customers who ordered Obamacare Websites have also ordered Triple-Headed Dildos."
"Add to Shopping Basket . . . ?"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Sounds like the author is completely unaware that software engineering and systems engineering are fields, and people get degrees in each. He thinks computer science is the degree for programming. Realizing that computer science teaches a lot that isn't programming, he suggests hiring a physicist who learned a little programming.
Maybe an analogy will help him:
If you want to design and build a physical thing, such as an engine, you get an engineer to design it. The *science* of how an engine works is physics, applying that science is engineering, not physics. Specifically, you want a mechanical engineer.
Similarly, applying knowledge to design computer-based systems is the job of an engineer as well, a different type of engineer. Either a software engineer or a systems engineer. The difference is that while an engine needs to be designed in detail, blueprints made, before it is built, for software the detailed blueprint *is* the software. You don't need the extra step of machinists physically constructing it after the blueprints are made.
Computer science is to programming as physics is to engine design.
Computer engineering, like mechanical engineering, is a degree that teaches you how to design robust, cost-effective things. Programs in the former, machines in the he latter.
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.