| > “One explanation is that CS really is a field where educational signaling doesn't (or at least needn't) matter as much as in other industries” Why are you mistakenly confusing education for education signalling? There are many types of skills required to be an effective software engineer. Most of them have nothing to do with mastery of a programming language or technical tool, and have zero connection to solving coding puzzles in a short timeframe or memorizing answers to classic systems design questions. You need to be a skilled writer and researcher to deduce business use cases and write effective summaries, presentations or user documentation. You need appreciation for potentially many other knowledge domains, from legal topics & security to applied sciences. Having basic coursework in calculus, chemistry, physics, rhetoric, history & civics, etc., are crucially important in business settings. It seems so tone deaf to me to baldly state that education signalling is a factor here, as if signalling was the phenomenon (it’s not). Education (as opposed to education signalling) is a very valuable thing, and certainly fosters more effective engineers by a landslide. The popularity of hiring from bootcamps or non-traditional engineering backgrounds is a commoditization issue, meant to suppress wages from growing as labor productivity creates dramatically greater returns. There’s no shortage of engineers... there’s a shortage of “cheap” engineers (and yes, $130k is a cheap price for these types of hires). |