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Funny how everyone and their mom was screaming to study computer science 3-5 years ago. Bragging about earning 6 figure wages. This is what that kind og hype gets you. A saturated job market with high unemployment rate. Next the wages will plummet because people will be so desperate for a job, they’ll gladly work for half of what they’re worth.
Companies have been pushing that for many years because they wanted wages down.
This is all payback for the power the workers gained during the pandemic.
Ding ding ding ding!
This is the correct answer
This is what planning education around fantasies creates. Demanding so many go into any one field is silly. The reality is that we need many different kinds of skilled work and no one is immune from market fluctuation.
I’m not so sure. Coding is a skill, just like any other. A project or construction manager who knows VBA can automate 1/5 of their job. A mechanical engineer who knows code can modify a CNC. A sales rep with coding skills is an unstoppable force for leads, outreach and reports.
Yes, coding was long a job and it long still will be for the best in the business, the well connected, or those who focused on archaic languages. For the rest of us, it becomes a skill like trigonometry or knowing a foreign language.
It’s a lot easier to teach yourself coding with a degree in a different field versus teaching yourself an entire different field with a degree in coding though.
So true. And why stop at one? I’ve had to teach myself 9 fields, so far, to apply my degree in coding.
Haha, I was going to say “Let me introduce you to contracting”. I’ve had to be everything from an agronomist to a supply chain manager to make things work.
Yes. Most of mine are from contracting, as well.
most software engineering isn’t actual computer science, it’s plumbing. and most coding isn’t software engineering, it’s scripting. we overproduced CS majors when we should have taught scripting as part of the curriculum for ME, finance etc.
and even the plumbing should be separated into a different major. it’s like hiring electrical engineers as electricians.
Have you used software/online services lately? It seems that half the stuff out there is broken in some way… I don’t think the problem is a saturated market at all but a lack of understanding of the profession by business leaders. I actually believe there’s a software crisis happening and the tech debt is only going to get worse with over/misuse of AI. At this point, considering the chaos this might create, I don’t even know if I want to be right… There have been plenty of examples of this mismanagement causing havoc in the news the last few years and we’re still moving in the wrong direction imo…
Naa, this isn’t from to many people, this is from companies trying to hire people who know what the fuck they’re doing. The number of people I run into on a daily basis that have zero understanding of the basics is way to high, and these people are usually devs. It’s like someone wanting to build a house but all they know how to do is roofing. Colleges pop out these CS majors and they think their degree is going to land them a job, while having zero actual skills outside of what they did in college. You can’t expect me to hire you for six figures if you can’t even install windows or linux. Go take a help desk job to learn the basics first.
No don’t take a help desk job, you’ll be forever tarred as a support person who’s at best a wannabe programmer.
Everyone I have ever worked with that’s worth a damn started with help desk. If you can’t start there and learn the basics and move up, you don’t need to be in the field.
There’s a big difference with help desk jobs and data engineering, for example. What’s the point of having someone that knows spark and sql solving tickets about permissions because some dipshit from middle management decided to randomly start removing permissions? (Sorry, it’s infuriating and I’m sorry for the people that need to reenable my user)
“Moving up” might make sense in regards to people management within a company, but that’s not a very smart take when talking about technical fields. I get paid to analyse data and to propose, implement and test data solutions. That’s what I know, it would have been dumb to ask me to start at help desk. I started in a startup to get diverse experience of several tools,and then directly moved into specialised jobs in bigger companies.
In fact, that’s my take, people should start at startups to get a wide range of experience before specialising, helpdesk jobs don’t really compliment a generic software developers skillset.
There’s a big difference with help desk jobs and data engineering, for example. What’s the point of having someone that knows spark and sql solving tickets about permissions because some dipshit from middle management decided to randomly start removing permissions? (Sorry, it’s infuriating and I’m sorry for the people that need to reenable my user)
“Moving up” might make sense in regards to people management within a company, but that’s not a very smart take when talking about technical fields. I get paid to analyse data and to propose, implement and test data solutions. That’s what I know, it would have been dumb to ask me to start at help desk. I started in a startup to get diverse experience of several tools,and then directly moved into specialised jobs in bigger companies.
That’s not the point of help desk, it’s to teach you the basics. How are you supposed to be worth a damn if all you know is your siloed app? You should understand the basics of AD, domains, networks, firewalls and basic security. You shouldn’t be developing apps if you don’t understand this stuff. That’s how shit devs operate.
In fact, that’s my take, people should start at startups to get a wide range of experience before specialising, helpdesk jobs don’t really compliment a generic software developers skillset.
The number of devs that don’t know the basics and put out shit apps that end up being security nightmares or just function like shit is mainly because they don’t know how the rest of the ecosystem works.
Yeah, no. I shouldn’t know the basics of active directory because I’m not at the administrative end of that tool, I’m at the user end of it. I work with wildly different tools where AD and domains are completely irrelevant for my job. It’s not even a siloed app, it’s the whole sector of data engineering that doesn’t touch systems management. That’s a completely different speciality and it’s as useless for me to gain experience there as is for my buddies that work in helpdesk and security to learn about distributed programming.
I agree with your assessment that having a global view is important, but that’s not what helpdesk offers, that’s what working on a startup of your sector offers, a wide array of tasks around the job you are specialising in.
Knowing how AD domains work doesn’t teach me shit about proper terraform structuring, what’s the best way to join multiple tables via spark, proper data manipulation, bash scripting skills (invaluable for my job and my buddies working at helpdesk know shit about bash).
You mention security, but disregard that there are tons of Devs that don’t work on user facing apps, right now I’m working on automatic processes that access very well defined tables and write again in well defined places. I’m not the one designing the permission scheme on Azure or anything like that, what I need to know is how to analyse data, how to design proper ETL systems that are able to make and efficient use of distributed systems, and plan good validation tools of the coded systems. None of that interacts with whatever someone would do in helpdesk.
Helpdesk has a good vision on security issues facing users and how the access and permission architecture of all the tools at a company works. Very valuable work, yet irrelevant for me to have experience on it.
Yeah, no. I shouldn’t know the basics of active directory because I’m not at the administrative end of that tool, I’m at the user end of it. I work with wildly different tools where AD and domains are completely irrelevant for my job. It’s not even a siloed app, it’s the whole sector of data engineering that doesn’t touch systems management. That’s a completely different speciality and it’s as useless for me to gain experience there as is for my buddies that work in helpdesk and security to learn about distributed programming.
I don’t know why you continue to argue about this. Understanding the foundations of the entire ecosystem is helpful. You’re argument is basically the same as those kids who say they’re never going to use math. I’m not telling you, you should learn trigonometry, I’m telling you, you should at least know how to add/subtract/divide/multiple.
I agree with your assessment that having a global view is important, but that’s not what helpdesk offers, that’s what working on a startup of your sector offers, a wide array of tasks around the job you are specialising in.
That’s absolutely what help desk does. You don’t just learn the basics, you learn how to interact with people as well.
Knowing how AD domains work doesn’t teach me shit about proper terraform structuring, what’s the best way to join multiple tables via spark, proper data manipulation, bash scripting skills (invaluable for my job and my buddies working at helpdesk know shit about bash).
You’re buddies need to dig a bit deeper if they’re not using bash scripts. That’s like basic shit.
You mention security, but disregard that there are tons of Devs that don’t work on user facing apps, right now I’m working on automatic processes that access very well defined tables and write again in well defined places. I’m not the one designing the permission scheme on Azure or anything like that, what I need to know is how to analyse data, how to design proper ETL systems that are able to make and efficient use of distributed systems, and plan good validation tools of the coded systems. None of that interacts with whatever someone would do in helpdesk.
Helpdesk has a good vision on security issues facing users and how the access and permission architecture of all the tools at a company works. Very valuable work, yet irrelevant for me to have experience on it.
Are you suggesting apps that don’t have user interactions don’t have security vulnerabilities?
Everyone I have ever worked with that’s worth a damn started with help desk.
This is so accurate. Past Help Desk experience correlates highly with leaders who actually know what they are talking about.
Yep, it seems there are people who are saying this is bullshit, but everyone who’s not high on their own farts seems to agree with it.
6% is Incredibly high unemployment, and a result of a persistent multi year coordinated class warfare effort against us programmers. We all use the AI they claim is taking the load off. We all know the truth. All of us who aren’t so new at this to be wowed by the shiny, are quite aware of the parts of our job it cannot do.
The owner class is coming at us because we programmers tend to be organized and well connected, and we have serious leverage.
Remember that 94% employment still represents a lot of shared power. Let’s look out for each-other. And remember that there’s not going to be enough of us to clean up the messes they are making by under-hiring. Be choosy who you help with clean-up, and who you justly leave to rot in their choices. Don’t stay too long working for shitty employers. Find the next gig, when it comes. Get the money they’re trying to claw back from the next place, and from the previous place on a short lucrative contract. If all they understand is money, give them a chance to express how much like they staying online and in business, with it.
NOTE: Computer Scientists are the folks that do lots of math to figure out the best algorithm to use to solve any given computational problem. It’s a very specific subset of programming.
For a long, long time companies sought to hire people with computer science degrees as software developers under the impression that these were the best people for developing software. This was a very bad assumption.
Turns out, computer scientists are often terrible at software development! They don’t usually teach things like how to best organize large projects or even basics like source code management or software deployment/management in CompSci programs. Yet those are the actual skills employers need these days.
Want to get a job in software development? You don’t need a degree at all! What you need is to demonstrate your skills with whatever tools/software employers are demanding. The simplest way to do that is with posting some open source code to GitHub (or similar).
When hiring—if the person I’m interviewing has a public repo that uses the tech we’re using—they’re basically hired immediately. At that point the only thing I care about is, “does this person seem OK-ish to work with?” LOL! Easiest hire ever 👍
Want to get a job in software development? You don’t need a degree at all! What you need is to demonstrate your skills with whatever tools/software employers are demanding. The simplest way to do that is with posting some open source code to GitHub (or similar).
From my experience you certainly need both
In my experience technical knowledge can fill the gap, but it has to be demonstrable.
You’re in minority. Usually when people hire programmers they want us to jump through unnecessary hoops and solve stupid fucking leetcode bullshit, and rarely care about anything else. Oh how I hate the leetcode bullshit.
The problem is that CS curricula vary quite a bit from university to university. Having ABET accreditation helps (or at least used to) a good bit with this as it required a program to include certain brass tacks material as well as (workforce) project participation items. However, many of those accredited programs effectively emerged out of EE departments so there’s a very weird skewing effect in the field.
So… you hiring?
A lot of schools didn’t offer Software Engineering degrees until the past 10 years though, so people got CS degrees. In college, if I planned on doubling up on as many credits as possible for highest overlap (electives for one and required for the other), there was only a 12 hour difference in courses, which is just one more semester. I don’t think you could double major in them though because of how similar the fields were.
I started in CS for 2 years before swapping to SE, and it’s true that CS was a lot more theory, but we still had to do most of the time same hands on programming.
Every “entry level” job opening asks for five years of experience with some technology that has only existed for two years.
I got my CS degree eight years ago, and it’s been gathering dust as I’ve been working an unrelated part-time job instead. At this rate I feel like it might be too late for me, having no real work experience at my age is something recruiters probably see as a red flag…
I have a 2 year degree in sys admin from 10 years ago. For most of that 10 years I worked as a sys admin in a smaller company where I wore many hats. I had a year of coding at uni prior to my 2 year degree, so I knew how to code. Over that 10 years, I wrote scripts and small apps to automate some of my day to day work or at least built tools to help do things.
Last year, I switched jobs and I’m kind of working part time with the dev team with a roadmap to get there full time. I’m in my mid 30s.
Basically, I just want to point out anecdotally that it’s not too late to get to do the work you want, it just may be slower and in steps to get there if you can find a company to work with you. Alternatively, you could maybe get in at a start up looking for junior devs. The red type might be easier to get through there.
kinda same for bio-tech, bio related jobs. must have x, usally 2-4 years of skills. plus programs you never heard of. found out later these tend to be ghost jobs, or people they hire internally or VISA wise, and dint want to look discriminatory.
Idk, I got my entry level job with 5 years of experience. That’s what internships are for when you’re studying in Uni…
And I wouldn’t want to hire someone who hasn’t that experience. It shows a lack of drive.
Drive or lack of opportunity? ‘Just get an internship’ is as dismissive pf an argument as ‘just get a job’
5 years of experience doesn’t mean you need a job for 5 years
Just show me what you coded for the past 5 years. There’s no lack of opportunity for your github.
Five years of experience straight out of finishing a four year bachelor’s degree means that you need to start grinding for your career when you’re still a high school kid. To put it extremely politely: this is an unrealistic expectation.
To be programming when your in highschool, yes. If you’re not programming already in highschool, you probably shouldn’t study computer science
…or just expect to take an internship or do Foss work for a few years after you graduate, to catch up with your peers
If you’re not programming already in highschool, you probably shouldn’t study computer science
Lol, then what about these people with jobs after attending boot camps? They’re all there for their talent and experience?
Boot camps and certs are scams
Or they can just lie on their resumes like everyone else.
Resumes don’t mean shit. Tech interviews are hard. If you lie, you probably won’t make it to the first whiteboard interview
And if you’re skilled, you don’t really need “experience.” Just don’t lie about your skills.
How is the whiteboard interview going to uncover the fact that you only have two years of experience instead of five?
If you’re skilled, then you have experience. That’s the point.
Experience doesn’t mean you need to have had a paid job. Decide to make a game in Java? You’ll have a lot of experience. Publish it on GitHub, and that’s what your interviewer is looking for
You’d fail before the whiteboard interview. Its easy to detect people with little experience
I never ask how much experience someone has in an interview. I throw a hard problem at them and watch them work
Your classism is showing.
It shows a lack of
driveaccess to resources that allow you to do an unpaid internship.Internships for software are almost always paid, and compared to other disciplines, paid reasonably well. $30+/hr in Canada is fairly normal for dev/qa internships, and I’ve heard from several students that I’ve interviewed that they’ve made more in US companies. Some companies also offer raises for students that return for successive terms.
Who said internships are unpaid? Internships should be paid. Companies get marginal work for side projects for like 20x discount
you’re acting as if internships are easy to get into. dont know about cs/programming ones. but other stems like bio/biotech are notirously difficult and competitive to get one, if you can even find it. so most people try to get into limited lab spaces at a uni instead, and all the internships ive seen require a very high gpa plus geared only for specific scientists.
They are. Almost all tech companies have cs internships. There’s almost nothing to loose and a lot to gain.
But, again, there’s loads of FOSS projects on github with tickets tickets that you can just start contributing to. That’s also experience and highly valued.
LeArN tO cOdE!!11!
Ah yes, this single article negates the entire field.
I’m curious how this compares to non-STEM majors.
It says in the article
The major saw an unemployment rate of 6.1 percent, just under those top majors like physics and anthropology, which had rates of 7.8 and 9.4 percent respectively.
Computer engineering, which at many schools is the same as computer science, had a 7.5 percent unemployment rate, calling into question the job market many computer science graduates are entering.
On the other hand, majors like nutrition sciences, construction services and civil engineering had some of the lowest unemployment rates, hovering between 1 percent to as low as 0.4 percent.
This data was based on The New York Fed’s report, which looked at Census data from 2023 and unemployment rates of recent college graduates.
Other than anthropology, I think the rest of those are all STEM majors as well.
Here a table info with others non-STEM degrees unemployement rate: Labor Market Outcomes of College Graduates by Major ^<sup>.xlsx
It’s from the same source as the OP’s article (The New York Fed), you’ll see it says last updated in 2025 but if you scroll down you’ll see them mentioning it to be 2023 data which is what the article was based on too
Thanks, that was what I was looking for, but I missed the source data. That table also adds in an underemployment rate, which is a good reference too I think. Many of the degrees with the worst unemployment rates also have very high underemployment rates, meaning that many of the people in those degrees who do have jobs are only finding part time work or are stuck with jobs that don’t meet their qualifications.
While computer science/engineering does have a high unemployment rate, it’s underemployment rate is far better than the surrounding degrees. Taking that into consideration does make it seem like a better career than just the unemployment rate would suggest.
bio is middle of it, probably because most of them are in health, instead of research and biotech.3%, i wonder if they seperate the 2 biotech might be a higher unemployment, because i noticed that people often cant find a job most of the time, because of the significant amount of experience required+ grad degree if applicable.
Is anthropology not considered a science?
It depends on the focus I think, some anthropology careers do fall under STEM. But generally it’s not a STEM degree afaik.
I mean, it’s a BS not a BA right? Or no? Same with psychology?
BA doesnt recovery heavy math, and stem courses, unlike a BS degree. i looked at a BA and bs for bio, bio required a ton more lab and science cours, and chem, ochem, biochem. but ba might not require all of those. for psych its almost always BA, unless your doing a PHD in the future. PSY-D might only need a BA.
TIL it can be either?
From looking it up, it’s usually a BA, but it can be a BS depending on focus.
depends if the students intends to go into grad school or research, probalby best to get a BS, if there is one. rather than go through the headache of getting required courses down the line tha tthe BA dint require. some people fall into the trap of doing a BA, because it finishes the degree faster. as a post-bacc, which people realize thier mistake will have to pay more for tuition, and wont have any priority for registration, which some universities might have professors only teaching a class you need one semester and not another.
physics and anthropology, pretty much you can guess, there really isnt a market for these majors, outside of a university, or a university lab. and faculty positions are extremely competitive, and university also wish to not employ anymore tenure so they dont have to pay employees too much.(thats why they have been cutting corners with adjuncts)
It would be better to introduce ‘programming literacy’ course. Like, learn whatever trade you like, but with a computer, because computers are everywhere now.
The computer by itself isn’t that much useful, it needs to control something, like CNC welding machine, and if you can write the most basic Python to control your welding machine, you can do twice the work, because you can run your welding machine at night.
Not an employer.
From the outside, it looks like everyone expected Gen Z to just magically become computer literate because they ‘grew up with them.’
because it worked for millennials! it wasn’t an unfounded expectation. remember Flash? remember how many Flash games were programmed by 12yos? how many websites on Geocities and Angelfire? the 5kr1pt k1dd13z in the hacking scene? it was a golden generation of computer literacy. dev tools were basic tools, we were exposed to foundational technologies while they were new, and the Internet was oriented around producing content rather than consuming it. then came the app era, and the TV-ification of the Internet, and those skills atrophied.
Nah, my script kiddie skills are still perfectly fine. It’s just that finding a regular coding job is easier and more profitable now, also the stuff I did 10 years ago is way less impressive now, when you have Youtube tutorials how to do that exact thing.
The Uni I graduated from introduced basic coding into every programm, from engineering to humanities to arts. Everyone used chatgpt to get through it without a second glance because they didn’t even understood why they need that. Even management didn’t, I guess, but they wanted to check a box of ‘being modern and progressive’.
It should be explained and deeply inserted into each program with at least a couple of mixed half-IT disciplines, like Databases in Law Practice or Computer vision in QA or Automation in Accounting or MatPlotLib in Countative Studies or… As it was there, it’s an isolated course that’s the same for everyone, it’s on you to create a project connected to your main interest. And, as I heard, no one really made it besides getting a minimal sum to pass.
Basically, it needs effort and understanding from both sides.
Educational bureaucracy strikes again!
It’s likely that you will learn the same exact thing when you’re 35 and need to improve your trade skills, but as a self-study and not an university course with zero relation to real life.
The field of programming is vast, and you totally can learn only the tiny part that is useful to you and ignore everything else. And learning CS to write programs is like learning to design combustion engines to drive a car.And learning CS to write programs is like learning to design combustion engines to drive a car.
Sometimes.
But often people will “write programs” without a decent understanding of the underlying layers and principles or foundation on which the technology is built. (Even some CS majors will do this.) this will result in weird bugs and behaviors they cannot understand or debug. Meanwhile their peers and managers have begun to use and rely on these programs and even integrate them into larger processes and workflows. Once the bugs start showing up, now you’ve got a big problem.
There are also some basics you’d probably won’t even register breaking without experience, going as far as pushing user credentials and personal data to an open git repository. I did that in my second pet project with just my temp keys to the cloud API, and github flagged that immediately. I guess, having at least the briefiest knowledge could’ve helped newbies avoid errors like that.
I don’t know if it’s bullshit or not, but I discovered that not every person has the mentality of seeing everything through an algorythmic lense, like detecting a repetition in a mundane task - and guessing, if it can be solved with a macro. I invented a lot of simple solutions, like these, or just combos of programs to optimize the workflow in my office, and I see not only my colleagues struggle to use these, many work for years in the least optimal way, even if the program itself, e.g. Excel, provides automated math equations - some still use calculators and put in the result by hand. It got me thinking, maybe IT isn’t for everyone, and other learning\working styles won’t benefit from such education even if it’s given - while acing in something else entirely?
this is honestly predictable, I spent a few years working as a RA in a university on computer engineering, and the general trend was to lower educational standards to meet the employment demands of the industry
I personally know quite a few people with bachelor’s and even master’s degrees in CS who struggle with even the most basic data analysis or programming concepts (I earned quite a lot of booze with “tutoring”)
We are educating people to be unemployed with kanban experience
99.9% of jobs requore at least 3 to 5 years of experience
Lmao just learn to paint, nerds. How about you get a real degree next time
Should have gotten an English degree so they can do something useful like teach.
I recall reading a piece on The Register some weeks ago, about the “enshittification of tech jobs”. It was a load of bullshit (mostly a whining piece on how workers for the megacorps were no longer being treated with red carpets) and the comments rightly stated that tech jobs were shit since the 1980s. Folks also chimed on how “have a compsci graduation and you’ll get good job offers with good salaries” has been a lie for a long time, especially when you don’t live near any tech hub
Seems ironic when you consider how many people start out in all kinds of other things and end up as programmers. [I was chemistry major]
i have extended family that had cs, and couldnt find a job, they are probably in adjacent fields. i can say the same for bio related majors that is not going into health, which is more difficult : must have lab experience prior to graduation(catch 22, where else can you get it when not in school), you’d be lucky to even get it as a post-bacc if they dont already prioritized undergrads, and graduates first. and the biggest is research experience, which is even harder to get than lab(research as part of your degree doesnt count, unless you were published in well known journal, its pushing it though.) i know people with a MS in a bio-related degree with no job prospects, gave up after 4 months of searching in '18. agraduate degree is even less attractive to a job market.
while one of my closer fam had a wierd hybrid programming and only found a job after 1 year of searching last decade, and got laid off in '23, still unemployed to this day, he thinks he can live off what he earned over 9-10years on the job and severance pay.
i met someone in a gig job with a CS degree, was somewhat delusional, he thinks by going into a ms/ma degree for CS would mean he be able to advance in his career(obviously came to a in-between jobs because his cs dint work out), but many schools wont take someone who already has a degree, unless you’re applying to a grad program. basically no 2nd BS degree, no degree shopping, or academic “incest”(which is getting a undergrad and a grad degree from the same school)
I’m quick to think this is an issue of bad educational standard mixed with confused terminology. Computer science is a very theoretical subject with very few directly practical applications. It’s like studying pure math and expecting to be a qualified engineer - you can technically do the numbers, but have no idea about the practicality.
I’ve never met a person with a computer science degree who was skilled at operating a computer, never mind practical coding. And I’ve met many. Most of them expected something very different from what they actually learned.
Yeah and how much is lost to off/near shoring?
