There's some good points here. I don't have a degree and, as a senior in their late 20s, find myself teaching things I consider basic to CS graduates.
I work in one of the big 5. I keep finding myself wondering why we have 50+ engineers on our team when we can never deliver anything on time. Everything we build feels cumbersome, over-engineered, and overly-reliant on bespoke internal tooling that nobody outside of our company uses. After coming from startup land and building infinitely more useful products in a 10th of the time with 1-pizza teams, I wonder how the hell this gargantuan company can move around $1B market cap on wall street when its so inefficient and full of incompetent engineers.
It genuinely feels like we've reached peak too-many-cooks. I keep expecting mass layoffs to cull the fat but they never come. We just keep hiring more and more and more.
I've worked at several of the big five, as well as a couple smaller companies, and I can't say I've had a similar experience. As long as people are willing to deprecate, delete, and consolidate continuously like your sanity depends on it, the scope of problems seems to be constantly shifting as things improve.
There will always be problems. Every time we solve one thing, we move to a place where we discover new kinds of issues. The question is whether we keep running into precisely the same kinds of issues over and over again, and in my experience, this has not been the case.
Sounds similar to my situation. I try and put it down to programmers like programming to justify why the devs here take the most complex route rather then the cheapest/fastest/reliable route.
I’ve heard this type of speech before. It’s a very candid almost scary talk designed to shake you up and get you focused. The gist was don’t think this degree is all you need. If you get lax some jerk with a history degree is going to take your job and you’re going to flying airplanes full of rubber dog poop from Hong Kong (sorry for adding the top gun reference... for me everything boils down to 80s movie quotes). And these speeches are right - you can’t rest.
Every couple years someone would predict software developers (where CS majors were heading) would be out of job for various reasons. Spreadsheets would let business people to do analysis. Report writers let people to generate reports. Visual programming let people drag and drop to build software. VBA will take care of all business needs. Rule engines will generate programs en-mass. Code gen from UML/State-Diagram would make developers obsolete. The latest is the claim that AI will generate software and replace developers. These people are clueless about the nature of programming, software abstraction, and the trends to automate all aspects of life. Software and developers are more likely to put people from other fields out of job than the other way around.
It's more likely the teaching aspect of the college professor will be replaced by AI/machine in the near future.
Yeah, I remember the big art history boom times. It was crazy, it seemed that everyone was getting into the space, salaries seemed to be going up almost daily, the completion was cut throat.
The professor should stick to teaching computer science and not try to be market economist.
I thought we already went through this in the early 2000's when everyone predicted all CS work would be outsourced to India in the near future. The fact is we work in an industry with potentially crazy profit margins, a handful of skilled programmers can create something worth X1000 their income. Skimping on your development team has been proved again and again to be a terrible idea.
I do agree that if you are in it for the money, you will have a bad time and not get very far.
>> a handful of skilled programmers can create something worth X1000 their income.
What you're trying to say here is that 'only a handful of programmers have been at the right place at the right time to earn the position that gives them enough equity worth x1000 the income of others'.
There are many talented developers out there.
Trying to say that an average developer from India has the same chances of getting involved with a highly-financed startup at it's early stages as an average developer from Silicon Valley is just misguided at least.
The real problem with CS is that it changes quickly and skills become obsolete. If you don't actively work to maintain current skills you are likely to end up getting turfed out in the next downturn. Even that's not a unique problem. IBM assembler programmers and blacksmiths are both pretty rare these days, for similar reasons.
Computer Science - as in the fundamentals and mathematics behind computation do not change frequently at all. Graph theory never really goes out of style, and the biggest changes have been with respect to distributed computing and conflict resolution.
The thing that scares me the most is the confusion of software frameworks and platforms with "CS" and fundamentals. Its as if people believe there aren't any fundamentals at all.
But IBM Mainframe programmers aren't as rare as one might think. And that platform is one a young person can grow with their whole career instead be whip sawed by the latest Javascript framework every year.
In the future there will be three jobs: artists, engineers, and sellers. Artists will design and create the products but they’re at the top of the pyramid. Next you have sales for people who don’t have the technical or creative skills but who know how to hustle. Then you have the people who are going to implement the ideas of the artist and give sales something to sell. Insofar as CS is how we build with information I see this as the biggest class and see no oversupply, only oversupply of unqualified talent.
What about just ordinary proles? I mean the big shiny economic machine is not nearly so automated as it appears to be. It’s a mechanical Turk composed of billions of low paid laborers. Even Elon musk is discovering that there’s a limit to automation.
I agree 100%. CS programs are packed now because they pay is so high vs other majors. The problem is that there are only so many positions the economy can accommodate and many of the students going through the system now will never get a job in the field.
The outstanding graduates from the prestigious programs will always get a great job but everyone else will have to fight for the jobs that are left.
Look at India. The schools are turning out a bunch of CS/Engineers but the economy can not accommodate the number that are graduating so many of them are getting jobs they could have gotten without all the education. The same thing is happening here.
The real winners will be the ones that use CS as a stepping stone to creating a business, therefore, creating your own need for the degree.
If I had to get a degree now I would pick a combination CS and business degree with a minor in a field that's in the humanities and start to figure out how I'm going to put it to use.
A CS degree alone will lead to a job that does not need it and could have been gotten with any college degree. It's really supply and demand in effect.
We definitely do not meet the demand for programmers in the market. Big software companies don't only look at the number of CS grads since the real need is for talent. Not all of these graduates have the skill required to work in top tier companies, but I'd argue that not all jobs need top tier talent, and that there's plenty of jobs out there that are still looking for the average joe programmer.
There are so many dev jobs in the big coastal cities. Seattle must have 20k openings between just the fangs, 1000+ little companies that each want 10 more devs (including mine). And in big cities like Dallas or Houston there is just a lot of demand. 35k grads in 2016 in the entire us, and Seattle could probably about absorb them all if you add in the east side. there's never been a boom like today for lawyers - its just not comparable.
1. without more context about who the professor is targeting his tirade at and which company C levels he's actually talking, it's hard to evaluate this
2. will there be shrinking in the middle band of SAP/Infosys companies where work has already been proven to be fungible (by their h1b shenanigans) in the near future? probably. does this sort of pressure exist in the middle band of any profession? yes (even if the AMA is fighting tooth and nail to artificially limit supply in the case with MDs)
3. is AI mostly a hype-add to boost valuation? yes. but does a lot of it work and generate real revenue? yes. almost by definition the more valued something is, the more likely it is overvalued. I fear this professor hasn't seen most of the unsexy AI work. where 90% of the value may come from the actual AI work, but 90% of the work is on the infra around it.
> He made the argument that globalization (read: Asia) is pumping out masses of CS people who corporations will continue to use to write cheap code and do CS work at low ass wages.
Anyone can major in Art History without a lot of effort. It’s not a differentiating credential for many jobs.
CS is a very difficult major. It’s a differentiating credential for many jobs. That’s why the market clears differently.
The quality of CS programs (and grads) may go down but there will always be a market for the talented. I think Finance and Accounting might be the more appropriate comparison. There is a lot of outsourcing and crap accountants, but the best financiers still do very well.
would sign that. Basically what you learn in a good CS program isn't trivially accessible or more or less "soft" knowledge requiring only a (very good) command of the language you already need for day-2-day communication. It requires logic and strict thoughts – while those things aren't necessarily making you a good coder, this are skills not wielded by the masses anytime soon because they require (for most people) to really sit down and learn.
For art history you probably go there, look into your textbook and just start talking about random stuff associated with limited data and if you're audience isn't really into their code/peer-bias-bubble/.. there is a big range of "reasonable" things you can say. (saying that as a physics major with a lot of CS friends and random acquaintances which I regularly impress by just introducing random facts (they don't think a STEM-guy knows...) in conversation and giving them a techy twist...)
As to the salary question: apparently a lot of people see academia as a sort of fancy tradeschool with guaranteed above average income and of course this is not the main objective of academic ventures and if everyone thinks that, some has to be the below-average-guy or gal. For the average person studying solely for the purpose of eventually making more money is just plainly stupid.
Boom and bust. Oil price goes up. The need for gas exploration and drilling goes up. Money pours in. Petroleum engineer's pay goes up. Oil price goes down. The trend reverses.
[+] [-] mmmeff|7 years ago|reply
I work in one of the big 5. I keep finding myself wondering why we have 50+ engineers on our team when we can never deliver anything on time. Everything we build feels cumbersome, over-engineered, and overly-reliant on bespoke internal tooling that nobody outside of our company uses. After coming from startup land and building infinitely more useful products in a 10th of the time with 1-pizza teams, I wonder how the hell this gargantuan company can move around $1B market cap on wall street when its so inefficient and full of incompetent engineers.
It genuinely feels like we've reached peak too-many-cooks. I keep expecting mass layoffs to cull the fat but they never come. We just keep hiring more and more and more.
This can't be sustainable.
[+] [-] lazzlazzlazz|7 years ago|reply
There will always be problems. Every time we solve one thing, we move to a place where we discover new kinds of issues. The question is whether we keep running into precisely the same kinds of issues over and over again, and in my experience, this has not been the case.
[+] [-] scomp|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattrp|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lawrenceyan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ww520|7 years ago|reply
It's more likely the teaching aspect of the college professor will be replaced by AI/machine in the near future.
[+] [-] grad_ml|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carboy|7 years ago|reply
The professor should stick to teaching computer science and not try to be market economist.
[+] [-] ericmcer|7 years ago|reply
I do agree that if you are in it for the money, you will have a bad time and not get very far.
[+] [-] heavenlyblue|7 years ago|reply
What you're trying to say here is that 'only a handful of programmers have been at the right place at the right time to earn the position that gives them enough equity worth x1000 the income of others'.
There are many talented developers out there.
Trying to say that an average developer from India has the same chances of getting involved with a highly-financed startup at it's early stages as an average developer from Silicon Valley is just misguided at least.
[+] [-] hodgesrm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdsully|7 years ago|reply
The thing that scares me the most is the confusion of software frameworks and platforms with "CS" and fundamentals. Its as if people believe there aren't any fundamentals at all.
[+] [-] 0x445442|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdlecler1|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fallingfrog|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] WheelsAtLarge|7 years ago|reply
The outstanding graduates from the prestigious programs will always get a great job but everyone else will have to fight for the jobs that are left.
Look at India. The schools are turning out a bunch of CS/Engineers but the economy can not accommodate the number that are graduating so many of them are getting jobs they could have gotten without all the education. The same thing is happening here.
The real winners will be the ones that use CS as a stepping stone to creating a business, therefore, creating your own need for the degree.
If I had to get a degree now I would pick a combination CS and business degree with a minor in a field that's in the humanities and start to figure out how I'm going to put it to use.
A CS degree alone will lead to a job that does not need it and could have been gotten with any college degree. It's really supply and demand in effect.
[+] [-] derangedHorse|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NotSammyHagar|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aznpwnzor|7 years ago|reply
2. will there be shrinking in the middle band of SAP/Infosys companies where work has already been proven to be fungible (by their h1b shenanigans) in the near future? probably. does this sort of pressure exist in the middle band of any profession? yes (even if the AMA is fighting tooth and nail to artificially limit supply in the case with MDs)
3. is AI mostly a hype-add to boost valuation? yes. but does a lot of it work and generate real revenue? yes. almost by definition the more valued something is, the more likely it is overvalued. I fear this professor hasn't seen most of the unsexy AI work. where 90% of the value may come from the actual AI work, but 90% of the work is on the infra around it.
[+] [-] 8bitsrule|7 years ago|reply
AI's are still running cars into freeway barriers and firetrucks. The 'big 5' can't even hold on to "their" own data (yours).
[+] [-] world32|7 years ago|reply
Haven't we been through that before?
[+] [-] devxpy|7 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/_xpKFWzMceE
[+] [-] scotty79|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sigi45|7 years ago|reply
But still we can't find enough good people in munich at all. And it is not just munich.
[+] [-] NotSammyHagar|7 years ago|reply
Seattle can't find enough programmers either.
[+] [-] chopin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mathattack|7 years ago|reply
CS is a very difficult major. It’s a differentiating credential for many jobs. That’s why the market clears differently.
The quality of CS programs (and grads) may go down but there will always be a market for the talented. I think Finance and Accounting might be the more appropriate comparison. There is a lot of outsourcing and crap accountants, but the best financiers still do very well.
[+] [-] fock|7 years ago|reply
For art history you probably go there, look into your textbook and just start talking about random stuff associated with limited data and if you're audience isn't really into their code/peer-bias-bubble/.. there is a big range of "reasonable" things you can say. (saying that as a physics major with a lot of CS friends and random acquaintances which I regularly impress by just introducing random facts (they don't think a STEM-guy knows...) in conversation and giving them a techy twist...)
As to the salary question: apparently a lot of people see academia as a sort of fancy tradeschool with guaranteed above average income and of course this is not the main objective of academic ventures and if everyone thinks that, some has to be the below-average-guy or gal. For the average person studying solely for the purpose of eventually making more money is just plainly stupid.
[+] [-] minikites|7 years ago|reply
Another day, another Hacker News comment asserting the inferiority of any non-technical subject based on zero experience or evidence.
[+] [-] fallingfrog|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hydraulix989|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ww520|7 years ago|reply