[philosophus]

Fairly sensible advice. One quibble I have is the idea that computer science departments are somehow shortchanging students by not teaching them business skills. If you want to learn business, take some classes from the business or economics department. Or ask for advice from a businessman. Computer science professors should be teaching computer science, not business. It's kind of silly to expect otherwise.

[jlees]

Academic 'business' courses can seem as far distanced from real business as computer science is from day-to-day engineering. Perhaps neither computer science or business professors are the best equipped to teach these things. Finding a mentor (or mentors) and having solid internship experience is probably as lot more effective -- that's why co-op programs with lots of real work experience are popular for hiring.

Also, often degree programs (especially those outside the US) don't have the same flexibility to pick and choose classes from other areas of study as the US major/minor/credits system. I know mine didn't, though I did a summer entrepreneurship course at the Business School which was enlightening (and almost entirely focused on writing a business plan, something I have never done since.)

[jeffreyrogers]

This might be an interesting anecdote to think about the value of business education. I have a number of friends at top tier business schools (HBS, Stanford's GSB, etc.). Of these people none studied business in college (though they did go to work in management, finance, or consulting post college. One worked in tech).

I asked one recently whether he thought there was any value in what he was learning in business school or whether it only served as a signal to other business school graduates that you're at least somewhat competent and have jumped through the requisite hoops. His answer was basically that the only value of business school was the relationships you made and the network you became a part of it. The actual content of what you're taught is pretty easy to learn on your own.

[atoko]

That is the difference between a software engineering major and a computer science major. With a CS degree the expectation is that you will stay in academia, while engineering curriculums have business courses baked in. Most CS professors are out of touch with the industry, and really, why wouldn't they be? Out of sight out of mind

[dpritchett]

In my experience college curricula have plenty of non-major courses for every degree. Surely there's room for negotiation, sales, and why-being-labeled-a-cost-center-is-generally-bad-for-your-career in a four year degree?

[apendleton]

I went to school for computer science and work for a non-profit. Some programmers (or whatever we're supposed to call ourselves) work for government, or any number of other things. The fact that we share technology in common doesn't necessarily mean we need to share any other particular skillsets, and I don't see how it's incumbent upon CS departments to make assumptions about how we'll go on to use our CS educations.

[dpritchett]

Yeah, I suppose there is no explicit guarantee that a CS degree will prepare someone to pursue a wage-earning career in a competitive market.

[tjr]

Why stop at a CS degree? Perhaps every undergraduate degree should include a (possibly optional) series of courses covering, well, how to make money. Have a course on employment, including the pros and cons of a regular job, advice on preparing for a job and presenting yourself as an applicant. And a course (or two) on starting businesses, from small service-oriented shops like restaurants and individual construction work, to selling digital products, to investor-funded startups. And then include a course on what to do with your money, covering concepts of savings, personal investing, pros and cons of buying a house vs. renting.

Something like this might be a three- or four-course sequence that I suspect would make college graduates much better off out of school. And maybe some students would decide to switch majors, out of selecting a more financially viable path to follow.

For that matter, make this a sequence of courses in high school. Or both high school and college. Some high school students may decide they don't need to go to college. Other high school students may decide that they do need to go to college. I had a class in high school that covered elementary personal finance, like how to manage a checking account and how to do taxes (by hand, on paper!). While I'm happy to have studied some geometry and read To Kill a Mockingbird, personal finance was probably the most useful high school class I had.

[apendleton]

I get paid fine, thanks. So do lots of people that don't ever do anything that has anything to do with sales. And which competitive market are you talking about, exactly? My experience has lately has been that there's such a dearth of decent programmers that nobody can manage to stay fully staffed, at least in my metro area (DC), on either the non-profit or commercial side. It's totally a job-seeker's market, and people with decent skills can basically work anywhere they want.

[dpritchett]

We agree that finding jobs hasn't been hard for US devs in quite a while. It's the longterm career-building aspects of figuring out which jobs are going to be more rewarding and enjoyable over a decades-long timeline that I have had to figure out almost entirely on my own.

I respect patio11 for sharing what he's learned. Remember, he used to work 80 hours a week for a junior dev's wage, and now he has crafted a more comfortable, self-determined lifestyle for himself.