Posted on 06/03/2024 7:20:28 AM PDT by zeestephen
The Wall Street Journal has an article this week on the grim job market for computer science majors...Students were told the myths about the great shortage of computer workers and they responded by flocking to computer science programs. Now they are discovering that the shortage claims were a sham when they apply for after-graduation jobs. [Link to WSJ article in Comment #1 - my computer hits a Pay Wall]
(Excerpt) Read more at cis.org ...
STEM careers are not a good idea. For many reasons. I suggest that people become bricklayers, plumbers, or electricians.
The entire reason they (tech companies) made up the shortage was to get government approval to bring in H-1B visa holders form India and China.
There still are plenty of tech jobs for foreigners willing to work for peanuts.
I disagree with the first sentence, but I agree with the second sentence. I suggest people pick a career before picking college or voc training school. Ask people already in that career what the average day is like, what realistic money can be made, and what it takes to get there (i.e. training, work hours per week, how much off-work hours you have to spend keeping up, etc.). The people already working in that field know more than the college advisors in the academic industry.
And if you like it, be it STEM or blue collar or whatever, then go down the path they suggest. Get the training that they, not the college advisors, say is worth real value. If that's college, fine, go to the colleges the real workers in that field suggest and get a degree in their suggested major.
There’s no shortage if you’re willing to pay US prices for a CS or IT degree and are willing to work for H1-B slave wages.
Coding is now just a part of another job, which doesn’t require a computer science degree.
1980’s. Legal assistant was the new and upcoming job. Started training before taking a blue collar job installing electrical systems. The legal offices I installed were pretty disgusting places. Water cooler talk confirmed it.
My son and high school and college buddies had their hearts set on careers in the gaming industry, thought it would be fun, cutting edge - and lucrative. All of them have CS degrees from prestigious universities.
They were wrong. The pay is terrible and you are expected to work very long hours for a very long time to bring the product to market ASAP. One of my son’s friends burned out after three years and escaped overseas to teach English, says he’ll never return.
The others ended up in fields like credit card processing, very boring, but they make good salaries.
There’s more. An unwritten code that says getting your hands dirty is to be looked down upon. Mike Rowe hopefully corrects it.
In the trades there’s a lot of down time that gives it’s workers a chance to reflect. It’s also a time to complain if things are not going well or fast enough. A 40 hour cutoff to earn benefits hurts employers as well as workers. I say do overtime rules by the month. 4.3 weeks means 172 hours worked in any calendar month before OT is mandated. Taking safety into account the hours can be completed in say, 3 weeks with a week off(total family time) or the option of overtime. Calif has a mandated 3 and a half days off per month-something like that.
Take away all the imports and there would indeed be a shortage.
But at this point there is no major that hasn’t been debased to fit the level of student at whatever level of college. So, although the newly minted CS grad may be among the best of their college’s product, that may not be saying much.
That said, not all the Indian or other similar imports are that impressive either, though they may be relatively reasonable in cost.
The answer is to completely overhaul our educational system while also lowering our number of annual imports.
Half of Millennials and Gen Z have wanted to go into gaming, so it makes sense that the cost of the required talent in that field now would not be high, though the hours they would command would be.
But previous generations across the board were willing to work longer hours to get established in prime fields than our little hothouse grads are now.
https://nypost.com/2024/05/30/lifestyle/gen-zers-boycotting-hard-9-5-jobs-for-their-mental-energy/
It's Summer and I'm looking forward to creating a splashy demonstration for a group of generals who have significant influence on the budget for my project. Aside from the Whipple procedure I'll be doing at the Huntsman Cancer Institute on June 25th, I expect to be pressing hard for a breathtaking demo. It will probably be less demanding than building a certified takeoff, climb, cruise, descent, landing performance package for the Embraer Phenom 100 jet. That was a fairly brutal Summer. It was a success and the military customer in the UK was pleased with the results.
The first requirement for a tech job in the US today is that English NOT be your first language. Being a non-citizen adds 10 points to your eligibility evaluation. Kind of like they used to do with “minorities” in the postal service.
I’m a unicorn. I’ve worked in the fields that computer science grads inhabit, and I don’t have a degree. What I have/had is a love for computers and making them work. This is a field that requires you to love what you do. If you don’t, you’ll half-ass things, and wash out pretty quickly (as things are CONSTANTLY changing, and you’re going to have to read and tinker A LOT to stay current). (I’ve seen several CS grads give up on coding, and turn into a project managers). And, FWIW, I’ve seen MANY grads with CS degrees who were for all intents and purposes USELESS. It was as though all the degree was useful for was showing that they could study for, and take a test. When it came to writing code, understanding code, or doing anything meaningful, they were worthless.
Curiously, 1999 was the year that the new H1B rules went into effect...
85,000 H1Bs per year.
Renewable for six years.
Employers can indefinitely sponsor H1Bs for Green Cards, which removes them from the H1B head count quota.
Indefinitely?
Yup. The number of Green Card to USA Citizenship conversions each year has a hard cap quota for each country.
Last time I checked, 1.6 million Asian Indians had Green Cards and are still waiting for Citizenship.
In other words - cheap foreign labor, sometimes for a decade or more.
Embrace AI.
I am.
Nope. First requirement is you work for cheap wages.
Without that cheap foreign labor working in USA, the work would be moved abroad. Internet is world wide. My X-Rays are now read by foreign doctors. By keeping the jobs in US, economy benefits with infrastructure maintenance, and property taxes to local governments. Buildings require cleaning crew, repairs, and peripheral staff. All that would be gone if business is moved abroad.
Computer Science is where you go if you can’t hack EE.
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