[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.