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I'm confused, are you saying CS degrees are not preparing students properly? Are there lots of people getting CS degrees who can't find a job? My understanding

I'm confused, are you saying CS degrees are not preparing students properly? Are there lots of people getting CS degrees who can't find a job? My understanding was the opposite: there are many opportunities to find a job despite not having a degree, but that the general topics covered during a degree are still pretty useful (data structures, algorithms, operating systems, distributed systems, statistics, programming language paradigms, networking, machine learning, ...).

scarface74 7y ago
Check out r/cscareerquestions over on Reddit to get a taste of how hard it is to find a job for some CS grads that didn't get any practical programming experience. If you are self taught and know the popular stacks, it's often easier to get a job than one based on theory. Your typical software as a service CRUD app maker doesn't care if you can "invert a binary tree". Most companies outside of large tech companies don't care at all about the list of "general topics" that you outlined - especially for entry level positions.
- asdff 7y ago
  You study these general topics so you aren't completely out of your league during internships. Internship are where you build practical skills and start developing your network. It's an absolute must to secure at least one internship or else it will be an uphill battle.
- MisterBastahrd 7y ago
  Whose fault is it that they went to college and expected a career to fall into their laps upon graduation? This isn't 20 years ago when most people were still offline. There's plenty of evidence out there that supports the idea that employers want strong data structure skills, portfolios, knowledge of git, etc. when looking for candidates. If a student isn't putting in the time on personal projects and they haven't sought out internships to prove their worth, then that's their fault. There are FAR more html / css / javascript / php / wordpress stack jobs out there than there are candidates who can fill those roles (I know this from experience because I actively avoided them during my most recent job search), so all a dummy with a degree has to do is play around with those for a month or two using existing themes and they'll be employable.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    How exactly are students suppose to know what they don’t know? If colleges can’t teach them that, what’s the purpose?
    - MisterBastahrd 7y ago
      I didn't realize that people live in bubbles and are completely unaware of the outside world. Colleges are there to create educated people in specific fields of study. If a student wants to learn more about the outside world, there are more than enough on-campus resources available that they are able to take advantage of, and students are certainly informed from the start regarding how they should acquire that information. Any student handbook would have plenty of information about what's available. Just because students are lazy and not motivated to learn beyond what gets them a letter grade doesn't mean that the information isn't available to them.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        If I’m spending $10s of thousands of dollars to get a degree in computer science - that is my world and I want a positive ROI for it.
        MisterBastahrd 7y ago
        If you aren't smart enough to ensure that you're going to get paid when you have a computer science degree, then it isn't the university's fault.
        scarface74 7y ago
        So at 22 years old how many people do you think “are smart enough” to know what the industry requires?
        MisterBastahrd 7y ago
michaelt 7y ago
According to [1] (which is, admittedly, from 2007) the majority of comp sci graduates can't write FizzBuzz. I would expect such people to have trouble finding a programming job. Now, I understand that a university would focus on timeless topics rather than current trends that will soon be outdated - but personally I see for loops as the former rather than the latter. Of course, the report in the source might be an over-estimate: presumably inept candidates attend many more interviews before getting a job. [1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/
- scarface74 7y ago
  So what are these “current trends that will soon be outdated”. Java? It’s been a go to Enterprise language since 2002. C#? It was a popular language at least as far back as 2005. JavaScript? I saw jobs wanting JS experience and knowing “Ajax libraries” back in 2008. C/C++? There are some jobs advertising for that still. My first job in both were back in the mid 90s.
  - michaelt 7y ago
    Any tech that gets established enough that university courses teach it is unlikely to completely disappear, it's true. But my knowledge of Visual J++, Ruby, Subversion, MongoDB, Docker Swarm, Sysinternals Portmon and MFC gets a lot less use these days than my knowledge of Java, Python, Git, SQL, Kubernetes, Wireshark and HTML. And of course, if someone asked me the command to delete a remote branch in git, or what window compositor ubuntu uses, or how to perform a linear regression in excel, such precise operating details and user interfaces can change at the drop of a hat!
    - scarface74 7y ago
      I see plenty of jobs that want Mongo experience and some that still want Ruby. Of course the fundamentals of SQL and relational database theory have been a useful skill forever. Even more specifically both SQL Server and MySQL have been popular for over two decades. The web was already popular by 2000 and knowing HTML and JS would have been a no brainer.

scarface74 7y ago

Check out r/cscareerquestions over on Reddit to get a taste of how hard it is to find a job for some CS grads that didn't get any practical programming experience. If you are self taught and know the popular stacks, it's often easier to get a job than one based on theory. Your typical software as a service CRUD app maker doesn't care if you can "invert a binary tree". Most companies outside of large tech companies don't care at all about the list of "general topics" that you outlined - especially for entry level positions.

asdff 7y ago
You study these general topics so you aren't completely out of your league during internships. Internship are where you build practical skills and start developing your network. It's an absolute must to secure at least one internship or else it will be an uphill battle.
MisterBastahrd 7y ago
Whose fault is it that they went to college and expected a career to fall into their laps upon graduation? This isn't 20 years ago when most people were still offline. There's plenty of evidence out there that supports the idea that employers want strong data structure skills, portfolios, knowledge of git, etc. when looking for candidates. If a student isn't putting in the time on personal projects and they haven't sought out internships to prove their worth, then that's their fault. There are FAR more html / css / javascript / php / wordpress stack jobs out there than there are candidates who can fill those roles (I know this from experience because I actively avoided them during my most recent job search), so all a dummy with a degree has to do is play around with those for a month or two using existing themes and they'll be employable.
- scarface74 7y ago
  How exactly are students suppose to know what they don’t know? If colleges can’t teach them that, what’s the purpose?
  - MisterBastahrd 7y ago
    I didn't realize that people live in bubbles and are completely unaware of the outside world. Colleges are there to create educated people in specific fields of study. If a student wants to learn more about the outside world, there are more than enough on-campus resources available that they are able to take advantage of, and students are certainly informed from the start regarding how they should acquire that information. Any student handbook would have plenty of information about what's available. Just because students are lazy and not motivated to learn beyond what gets them a letter grade doesn't mean that the information isn't available to them.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      If I’m spending $10s of thousands of dollars to get a degree in computer science - that is my world and I want a positive ROI for it.
      - MisterBastahrd 7y ago
        If you aren't smart enough to ensure that you're going to get paid when you have a computer science degree, then it isn't the university's fault.
        scarface74 7y ago
        So at 22 years old how many people do you think “are smart enough” to know what the industry requires?
        MisterBastahrd 7y ago

michaelt 7y ago

According to [1] (which is, admittedly, from 2007) the majority of comp sci graduates can't write FizzBuzz. I would expect such people to have trouble finding a programming job. Now, I understand that a university would focus on timeless topics rather than current trends that will soon be outdated - but personally I see for loops as the former rather than the latter. Of course, the report in the source might be an over-estimate: presumably inept candidates attend many more interviews before getting a job. [1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/

scarface74 7y ago
So what are these “current trends that will soon be outdated”. Java? It’s been a go to Enterprise language since 2002. C#? It was a popular language at least as far back as 2005. JavaScript? I saw jobs wanting JS experience and knowing “Ajax libraries” back in 2008. C/C++? There are some jobs advertising for that still. My first job in both were back in the mid 90s.
- michaelt 7y ago
  Any tech that gets established enough that university courses teach it is unlikely to completely disappear, it's true. But my knowledge of Visual J++, Ruby, Subversion, MongoDB, Docker Swarm, Sysinternals Portmon and MFC gets a lot less use these days than my knowledge of Java, Python, Git, SQL, Kubernetes, Wireshark and HTML. And of course, if someone asked me the command to delete a remote branch in git, or what window compositor ubuntu uses, or how to perform a linear regression in excel, such precise operating details and user interfaces can change at the drop of a hat!
  - scarface74 7y ago
    I see plenty of jobs that want Mongo experience and some that still want Ruby. Of course the fundamentals of SQL and relational database theory have been a useful skill forever. Even more specifically both SQL Server and MySQL have been popular for over two decades. The web was already popular by 2000 and knowing HTML and JS would have been a no brainer.