Will Financial Crisis Drive Students Back To CS?
from the but-does-CS-want-them? dept
There's some talk these days about how the financial crisis on Wall Street may be driving some students back to computer science. You may recall that during the dot com boom, enrollment in CS programs boomed, as it suddenly became a fast track to getting rich (or so some folks thought.) But, of course, the end result was that a lot of folks in CS weren't really that into actual computer science, but were just looking for the fastest ticket to getting rich. After the dot com bubble burst, many shifted their attention back to Wall Street, which had been the get rich quick path prior to the dot com boom. So, now that Wall Street seems to be imploding, there's talk again about students coming back to CS. While some see this as a good thing, you're again left with the same question: are these the types of folks who we really want in CS programs? If their sole determinant for area of study is what's likely to make them richest as fast as possible, they're not necessarily the folks who are really going to contribute very much to the space. There's nothing wrong with making labor decisions based on how much it may pay, but folks who focus on getting rich as fast as possible have a habit of screwing things up for everyone else pretty badly at times.
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Filed Under: computer science, financial crisis, get rich quick, students
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CS? What about Engineering?
Or am I just being a traditionalist thinking that actually making stuff is where the profit should be...
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Re: CS? What about Engineering?
Even though CS isn't Engineering.... :) It is still an in-depth technical field that requires hard hard work, dedication, and constant learning to do well. It is hardly a get-rich-quick scheme. Anything worthwhile is not get-rich-quick.
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Re: CS? What about Engineering?
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UK's culture secretary announces desire to "taste and decency" standards to online content
Bill Thompson takes him down a peg, but it reminds me of an Adam Curtis interview from last year that outlined a serious lack in confidence in TV broadcasters on how to deal with the net age;
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/20/adam_curtis_interview/page5.html
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Industry will weed them out
IT has a way of weeding the week skilled people out, or at least pushing them into network administration or desktop support.
IT is also not your typical field either, most great grunt IT people (Network Admin, Programmers etc) don't have the abilities or people skills to manage, so they tend to remain at the bottom of the food chain while the management levels are consumed by these people trying to get rich quick.
The thing is I have made more as a Programmer than any manager I have had since the early 90's.
But with the influx of "foreign" cheap labor on our soil I just thank God I am at the end of my career and am nearing retirement.
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Re: Industry will weed them out
I complete agree with this statement:
"IT is also not your typical field either, most great grunt IT people (Network Admin, Programmers etc) don't have the abilities or people skills to manage, so they tend to remain at the bottom of the food chain while the management levels are consumed by these people trying to get rich quick"
That is one of the few things that this industry needs to have happen or keep happening. You also don't want to see all the people flood colleges and go to school for 4 years to get a bachelors degree only to piss it away to be stuck in Helpdesk positions taking up jobs that more qualified IT Profesionals could have. Only then to realize that they didn't wont to spend the rest of their lives working on computers, networks, servers, etc... Then leaving the industry to go persue some other thing that could help them make a ton of money as quickly as possible.
I my self have spent 4 years in school not to mention 6-7 years prior to that working on computers personally in my spare time as a hobby. Only to realize after high school that this is what I wanted to do with the rest of my life after I got a job at a factory working 12 hours a day 7 days a week. I would rather work on things that I am passionate about then working in a job field that I only have fraction of an intrest in.
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We should be part of the solution because that's what coders love to do - solve problems
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You wanna get rich quick
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If you don't believe in age discrimination...
Also, note that companies like HP are actively recruiting H1-b's to replace US programmers, despite the fact there is NO PROGRAMMER SHORTAGE.
Just remember that a programmer's job is always temporary, and that managers consider programmers to be fungible.
--
http://www.chl-tx.com Without the 2nd Amendment, the rest of the document is wishful thinking.
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slight correction
Also, I noticed age discrimination start in the 30s. Discrimination also starts whenever you, as an individual, decide it is not professional or desirable to be working 60 hours a week all the time and on call the rest of the time.
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CS for riches?
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IT has a way of weeding the week skilled people out, or at least pushing them into network administration or desktop support.
Yeah, like a dead server someone can't get back online or crappy code that's slow an ineffective.
If you don't actually *like* IT, chances are, you won't do well in the field.
I have no degree, but have trained people with degrees. I have a couple old certifications and again, have trained people will all the latest certs.
Experience and a personal interest will net a much better skill set in IT than any training ever could (without an interest). It's like a car mechanic - the good ones are the ones who really enjoy what they are doing and likely do it as a hobby too.
Last night, I spent most of the night fooling around with my PC, getting my Linux install tweaked more, and finally went ahead and installed Windows on another disk as well. That's why I 'know' the stuff well, it's my hobby too.
IT is also not your typical field either, most great grunt IT people (Network Admin, Programmers etc) don't have the abilities or people skills to manage, so they tend to remain at the bottom of the food chain while the management levels are consumed by these people trying to get rich quick
I am that person. You know - I can manage people, have done it in the past - but I outright HATE to manage people. Managing machines on the other hand - I LOVE that. Regardless of my position on the 'food chain', I guarantee I can get that server online faster than any of the management above my head - with one possible exception in the whole chain. But then, he's one of the 'geek' managers, who's REAL laid back. That's my problem with management - I'm too laid back to bark orders. That and I enjoy the tech portion too much to do 'management'.
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Mike has it wrong, largely
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Yep them video games are getting too expensive
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Opposite track
So... Anyone in the northern Baltimore area need a programmer with a passion for finance/investing? :D
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That was last week's headline
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Here is the problem.
Unfortunately, I doubt any of this will happen. Big government is already captured by special interests, prison unions, prison corporations, pharmaceutical industry, military arms industry, banking industry, investment banking industry, Chemical Manufactures, Petroleum industry, and the list goes on. We have so many lobbyists taking the time and attention away from our people that the people no longer hold any significance in our society other than the worker ants which consume which that run it. Government now no longer considers ramifications—especially those in high places—to which what they do might harm and eventually destroy the very fabric which created this country. As the circle comes round, the issue leads back to money. People forget that history tells us that the real reason we broke off from Britain was usury, and the right to pursue happiness in whatever form it may be in. Big government with the help of industry puts a huge dampener and stifles our economy at large because it knows no morality.
Anyways, just my 2 cents, and a babble at that.
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Your get what you pay for
and
"Programming's an ok living until you hit your 40's, then you will find out that somebody from India or China can do your job at half the salary.
"
Good programmers/etc you have to pay for. If you think a VB program with an access back-end is enterprise ready, then I guess China/India is for you. I'm sure they have decent programmers there, but you have to pay a lot for them and then they move here.
My company also out sources to India for some stuff, but nothing that we sell. We only out source a few internal tools and even then we get bugs that take them weeks to fix. Some of these bugs that keep coming back after weeks of 'programming', I was able to fix in under 30 minutes of opening up the files and using google; and even after sending them the code on how to fix it with detailed descriptions of eeach line of code, it took 2-3 revisions for them to implement it correctly.
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job market will be clogged sooner
Indeed, there are entire departments at these huge IBanks, not to mention entire stand alone firms, consisting of pretty much nothing but CS, math and physics types. They're the ones who created all these incredibly esoteric financial instruments that were the financial WMDs (as Buffett famously said a few years go) at the heart of this sudden meltdown.
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This is about CS, not IT
Computer Science is not programming, there's a reason they're called software engineers, and anyone who thinks it's not an engineering field doesn't understand what software engineers are doing.
In essence, software engineers are to programmers what architects are to construction workers.
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Re: This is about CS, not IT
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get money easy
Easy Money
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