It's a much deeper social problem. You'd be surprised at the number of potential programmers that went to study law or economics because of the sheer career op

It's a much deeper social problem. You'd be surprised at the number of potential programmers that went to study law or economics because of the sheer career opportunities you get with this background. You see a lot of engineers that took a roundabout course into the field after wasting years pursuing a different major or regular desk jobs, etc. People with a good engineering background might be educated in FORTRAN (for hard engineering) by a professor that hasn't programmed in decades. Hardcore departments (really depends on professor) might give you a good background in C. In general, it seems the computer science departments are really geared towards creating coding robots more than the big dreamer, tech entrepreneur. If you miss your chance to get a good job out of college, you'll never catch up to your peers and will more or less be relegated to the "loser" group and be lucky to either be job hopping in small venture companies or worse be one of the IT temp workers living in internet cafes (this is less hyperbole than it sounds). Also, while I agree that there are lots of competent coders, engineers just aren't as ruthless about personal productivity. They'd rather not rock the boat instead of getting into an argument. There's also the social tendency to take any form of argument personally. Combined with age-based seniority in programming teams, this kills innovation quick. A younger engineer with a pulse on the latest cutting edge technology isn't going to be heard at all. A crusty veteran, will just overrule them and say, "follow tradition". After decades of soul-crushing guess what these once brilliant engineers will say to fresh meat? It would take a lot of courage for a younger, capable engineer to go and rewrite the code of a senior engineer even if it's mediocre, he'd have to be careful even in wording the commit message. Performance on the job is not rewarded as much as "competence (meaning just enough to get by but not so much as to make others look stupid)" and at most you'll rarely get promoted over older employees, you'll just be first among equals in your age group and so will your salary (almost negligible in terms of monetary differentiation, people will just treat you better because you're on the "fast" track). If your body and mental health manages to survive the hours you might get rewarded in a management position by your 40s and join the ranks of "young guns" where you get to try your luck in Japanese corporate politics where deals are cut in dirty drinking shacks over yakitori and beer. Breakdown of academic background for elite companies: http://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/5873497/ http://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/5873497/