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by _fat_santa
63 days ago
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I feel like CS is just correcting back to what it was. Even back when I was in college (graduated 2017), I noticed there was this clear bifurcation among the students. Alot of the students at that time did it because you could score a great job after college but the smaller cohort were the students that just loved the game. And even back then we had loads of students wash out or graduate then take other jobs after college from the former group. It's no different today except that the group that did it for money are washing out before they even get to college because they fear that AI will take their jobs, meanwhile the latter group is still here and were able to do more and more with AI. It's a truly wild time to be alive in this industry. Half of us are seeing the doom and gloom of AI and the other half are seeing the "next age" happen right before our eyes. And I'll be honest I kinda feel sad for the folks that take the negative view of AI right now. Cause I'm having more fun than I've ever had before in this industry. |
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You covered people washing out of CS degrees and people getting degrees and then not, ultimately, doing something in the CS field.
But what you see in our field that you don't see as often, elsewhere (or -- at all, depending on regulations) is people who ... (1) washed out of the degree because it was competing with their lucrative career as a software developer (or -- more rarely, successful entrepreneur), (2) got a degree in textual biblical studies and had a long career in software development[0] or, you know, other unrelated degree, (3) none of the above, even sometimes incomplete High School education (also[0]).
I've been hiring developers for almost 30 years, now, at a variety of employers -- one global multi-national telecom, one "we make a lot of the products other companies pass off as their own work" IoT/small shop, and a couple of video conference/remote-enabling service shops. There are far more degrees out there, today, than there were 30 years ago. My experience, however, is that the necessity of a degree at the companies I've been employed at has gone down. I suspect that's because I worked for "the giant multinational", first, and all of the rest have been startup or smaller/younger shops (typically 5-10 devs, but no more than ~20 at peek). The giant multi-national, though, during my 17 years, changed (early on) to "or equivalent experience" while rarely hiring someone without a degree for most IT positions to routinely interviewing and hiring people without regard for their degree (and focusing on "code you've written" over "whiteboard exercises", too) while still generally favoring candidates with them. At the best shop I've worked for, it was an even mix of "none", "some", "unrelated", "+bootcamp", "CS degrees" and filled with extremely competent, well-paid, developers.
It's a whole lot harder to get the experience required to have "equivalent experience" without university/internships/the like, but getting the degree without any relevant work experience along the way isn't a good way to go, either.
Around the late 90s (until the bust) and then again a few years later, everyone was pushing kids into CS degrees and the most "interesting" aspect to many of those kids was the starting/long-term earnings against the cost of the 4-year degree. And while, personally, I think "anyone can do it", not "everyone will find it enjoyable to do" like I do.
I'm starting to believe that last part is far more rare than I think it is with my 18-year-old son mostly disliking his introductory computer programming class in High School[1]. I don't push "what I do" on them, just like my Dad didn't, but I expose them to it whenever I can (like my Dad -- kind of -- didn't). And I'll never forget when their Mom looked over at my screen and said "So ... is that what you do all day?", and I beamed "Yes" because it really is the most interesting thing in the world to me, and she said "Wow ... I think I'd kill myself."
[0] Ok, so that's a specific example of someone I know.
[1] Ultimately coming around at the end when his assignment was "make something you want to make."