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I read this article, then came to see if it had been posted to HN. As someone who dropped out of college and is now currently enrolled to finish my degree (wel

I read this article, then came to see if it had been posted to HN. As someone who dropped out of college and is now currently enrolled to finish my degree (well, I had to start over), my take on this is partly colored by how different things are now from then. When I was previously in college, most of my instructors were folks who had been in industry at companies I had heard of or had done research I had heard of and their background was not in computer science; it was in math, physics, electrical engineering, philosophy, linguistics, and in one case logistics. While I was focused solely on computers, my first experience through college was one characterized by instruction with multiple perspectives and a clear awareness that computer science was a cross cutting discipline that had things to learn from and things to teach to all other disciplines. As an example my instructors with backgrounds in linguistics had an interest in language construction and syntax, how we get to where computers and humans have a shared intelligible language along with topics like natural language processing and the concepts of regular languages and regular expressions. Now that I am in college again, all of my instructors either came out of CS themselves or came out of the field of education. Few have any industry experience, none are names I have heard of due to their research. Exactly zero have expressed any interesting opinions or perspectives that strayed from or colored in the material from the textbook. It’s a much more rote type of instruction now. The students have changed too. When I was previously a student, I made a number of lifelong friends even though I didn’t graduate. I would say it was 50/50 career-focused vs tech-focused. Now, it’s 95% career-focused, even though I am a non-traditional student I expected to connect with somebody around the joy of technology, but my only non-class interactions have been driven by people hoping I can refer them for jobs. I am not sure I agree with the conclusions of the author. I don’t think the specific bureaucratic structure of an academic discipline is that important for how the students turn out, I think it is far more important what intent the students and instructors come into class with. What I am seeing does not bode well though, it seems the nerds like myself are not dying out but are drowned out by a sea of people who are singled minded and focused on career, grinding out CS because it leads to high pay, not because they want to understand anything at depth or try to attain and share new insights.

atonse 3y ago
I can understand this. When I studied CS at UMD College Park in the early 2000s, it wasn't that much of a pop-culture a glamorous field yet. So most of the kids doing it were actually interested in programming and algorithms etc. And jobs, opportunities, and job offers were aplenty. But now that we've had nearly 20 years of FAANG companies growing into the stratosphere, surrounded by software and smartphones and the riches that world has brought, I can understand that it just attracts people that want the money. And there's nothing wrong with that in general (if you view college as a training program for jobs). But I would also guess that part of requests for job references might also come with ––– in the past 3 years you've seen a saturation of talent (via boot camps and CS degrees) but now AI is going to reduce the number of developers a company needs. So for the first time in my professional career, it isn't drop dead simple to get a job in software dev. I remember 15 years ago how much developers used to disparage recruiters because we didn't need them to find jobs, and the power dynamic was quite imbalanced. I never did even though I did have the occasional funny interaction ("do you have 15 years of C#?" type nonsense). But I always predicted there would be a day where all of us needed recruiters. So that day is here now. So I think it has to be VERY hard to be a college grad heading to a white collar job nowadays, CS or not, due to the hugely changing winds with AI.

atonse 3y ago

I can understand this. When I studied CS at UMD College Park in the early 2000s, it wasn't that much of a pop-culture a glamorous field yet. So most of the kids doing it were actually interested in programming and algorithms etc. And jobs, opportunities, and job offers were aplenty. But now that we've had nearly 20 years of FAANG companies growing into the stratosphere, surrounded by software and smartphones and the riches that world has brought, I can understand that it just attracts people that want the money. And there's nothing wrong with that in general (if you view college as a training program for jobs). But I would also guess that part of requests for job references might also come with ––– in the past 3 years you've seen a saturation of talent (via boot camps and CS degrees) but now AI is going to reduce the number of developers a company needs. So for the first time in my professional career, it isn't drop dead simple to get a job in software dev. I remember 15 years ago how much developers used to disparage recruiters because we didn't need them to find jobs, and the power dynamic was quite imbalanced. I never did even though I did have the occasional funny interaction ("do you have 15 years of C#?" type nonsense). But I always predicted there would be a day where all of us needed recruiters. So that day is here now. So I think it has to be VERY hard to be a college grad heading to a white collar job nowadays, CS or not, due to the hugely changing winds with AI.