The Continuing American Decline in CS 727
abb_road writes "America's recent dismal showing in the ACM Programming finals may be more than just a bad year; a BusinessWeek article suggests that the loss is indicative of the US's continuing decline in producing computer scientists. Despite the Labor Dept's forecast of a 40% increase in 'computer/math scientist' jobs, planned CS enrollments have plummeted from 3.7% in 2000 to just 1.1% last year. Other countries, particularly China, India and Eastern Europe, are working hard to pick up the slack, with potentially serious long-term effects for the US economy. From the article: 'If our talent base weakens, our lead in technology, business, and economics will fade faster than any of us can imagine.'"
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
This is your boss, I demand that you lower your rates or I'll hire less-expensive overseas developers.
Blame it on the .com bust and hype (Score:5, Insightful)
I graduated in 2000 when life was sweet for Computer Science majors. When the bubble burst, there was a false impression that computer related fields were doomed. I always found that amusing because our whole society is based on technology and will always need people to run it. Media reports and articles on websites like this didn't help either. They gave the impression that Computer Science wasgoing the way of the dinosaur when it truly was healthy.
http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]Its Simple - Pay CS Majors More (Score:1, Insightful)
In the US, we are motivated by one thing - Money.
If CS Majors made as much as doctors or lawyers, more people would take math and Computer science courses.
You wanna know why? (Score:2, Insightful)
I earn my paycheck doing network admin, in all that encompasses. I went to college for a year and half before I realized that the education I was getting wasn't going to prepare me for my chosen profession.
The schools get CS majors ready to be programmers ( bad ones at that ). That's it. There is a huge gap between what the schools teach and what businesses need from their computer personel.
I'm more valuable now than I would have been had I stuck around and graduated.
More H1B cap lobbying (Score:4, Insightful)
If you look in USA, everywhere but the Valley has an oversupply of IT people, my own employer just recruited a load of experienced staff in Portland, many excellent programmers too.
job pressure (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Its Simple - Pay CS Majors More (Score:2, Insightful)
Recruit Them (Score:5, Insightful)
*Of course, this is assuming that the U.S. has an actual shortage and the study isn't some ploy to get cheap code-monkey labor for Microsoft, Intel, et. al. I'll let my fellow slashdotters belabor that point.
The sky is falling! (Score:4, Insightful)
It can't be both that the programming field is in danger because we're outsourcing all our programming work, leading to no jobs for programmers, AND be that we're in danger of not having enough new programmers.
Re:Good -- or not (Score:3, Insightful)
It also seems that there are not very many Americans in my CS courses either, but there are many students from China and India. Does anyone have any comments on the fact that China and India sponsor education in their countries, whereas we in the US barely support it?
Hmmmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's see if we can figure this out. American kids aren't going into CS -- why? Perhaps because:
Did I leave anything out?
Re:Its Simple - Pay CS Majors More (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't really train abroad for a job as a doctor or a lawyer in the US. So a Computer Scientist it is for many people.
Yeah, I'd like to be paid more too, but why does an American deserve a better pay than an Indian or a Filippino?
FGovernment does not directly control the pay in a free market economy. What US can do is try to "spice up" the CS image. Make geeks cool. This is not easy too, because it does not directly control the media either, but ought to be simpler (and less invasive), than the labor market distortion.
That said, I think, the next "big wave" is in bio- and nano-tech. May as well let less developed countries work on office software.
Mediocrity (Score:5, Insightful)
My girlfriend is just finishing her degree in Education, and it is horrible just how bad it has gotten. They have dozens of programs designed to helping out disadvantaged children and poor performing students, while the gifted students are left to their own devices. My boss is from Europe, and their schools (at least in Sweden in the 1980s) encourage their best and brightest. The gifted students are the ones that are going to make the biggest difference in the workplace, while the struggling students are simply going to fill up the jobs that dont take much skill.
If we want to keep up in a technologically advanced world, we have to start caring about our gifted students, not just helping the below average ones pass school.
--
Caused, in part by software patents (Score:1, Insightful)
Seriously... I did CompSci in 1980, but today I'd much sooner go for a career in IP law. Better security, more money, nicer cars.
Kill software patents, and the spirit of innovation may come back. But it may also be too late. It takes a full generation (25 years, or more) for a strong IT culture to grow and flourish.
Re:Its Simple - Pay CS Majors More (Score:4, Insightful)
Add to that the fact that a CS degree does NOT imply a career in development, and development isn't what it used to be, and you have a bunch of people thinking hard about something completely different.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
If a CEO makes $147,000 per day, well that's market forces. If technical people start to break into 6 figures annually, well that's a threat to our global competitiveness which must be remedied.
Don't blame us. This what we've been told. (Score:5, Insightful)
When you're faced with poor, unstable job prospects and declining salaries due to offshore competition, what do you EXPECT us to do? The smart ones are realizing management (unfortunately) is the way to go. The rest will wither and die, unfortunately.
Kill the H1-B visas. (Score:1, Insightful)
If I were going to college and I saw a glut of underpaid foreign workers holding H1-B visas, I'd think twice about CS.
A few observations (Score:5, Insightful)
Stalin said "Quantity has a quality all its own", which may have been valid in an industrial economy. What is not apparent is whether it is valid in a service economy. I strongly suspect, and some of the numbers I have heard about the best programmers being 10x more productive than the average programmer reinforces this, is that it is not valid to use an industrial paradigm in a service industry. But I think most managers, political leaders, economists and average Joes just don't get this. Too often projects fail beacuse to save money the work is given to the lowest common denominator in programmers and managers. Whether in-house, out-sourced or off-shored. And make no doubt about it, software is a service industry.
Finally I say, good riddance. This is as good a way to filter out the riff-raff as any. Let those who love the field be the ones who enter it and stay in. They are the ones more likely to develop the tools needed for the next generation of development, both in terms of process paradigms as well as actual software tools.
Us Companies will not Pay for CS People... (Score:3, Insightful)
Its damn simple why go into CS when most CS jobs are getting outsourced/offshored for cheaper rates. This is causing a Glut of talent in the market and cuasing the rates that a company will pay for CS talent to go down. It sucks as a job course in life.
If US companies cut the crap and word gets out that they are willing to pay for talented CS people at decent rates and the workers don't have to be concerned with having the job cut out from underthem, then the enrolements will go up.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
I would solve this by making companies show that there are NO Americans at all who can do the job before getting an H1B. Also, I would love to see companies that are shipping jobs away boycotted.
Re:More H1B cap lobbying (Score:3, Insightful)
Blah blah blah. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Because the field is undefined. What is a mathematician? What do they do after they graduate?
I earn my paycheck doing accounting, in all that encompasses. I went to college for a year and half before I realized that the education I was getting wasn't going to prepare me for my chosen profession.
The schools get math majors ready to be theorists ( bad ones at that ). That's it. There is a huge gap between what the schools teach and what businesses need from their accounting personel.
I'm more valuable now than I would have been had I stuck around and graduated."
Now, you can't teach problem solving, but it's hoped after 4 years in school you have some idea of how to be useful. Learning technical trivia is easy; anyone can do it. It doesn't take a genius to change an oil any more than it takes a genius to administrate a small network. However, understanding the deeper concepts (CSMA/CD!) and other principles is very useful if you are a computer scientist.
The difference between a degree and a certificate from a trade school is exactly what you mentioned; people go to a trade school to learn how to do 1 job. People go to University to learn how to solve a superset of problems, which they can apply to any job they want from a particular perspective. I can attack problems of compiler theory, networks, operating systems, programming language theory, etc, because I'm well grounded in the theory behind these concepts, and have experience (both in class and with jobs and projects I've worked on around school).
In 20 years, the tools you use will have changed dozens of times. In 20 years, Dijkstra's algorithm for finding the shortest path on a network will likely be just as useful for link-state routing models as it is now. So your final sentence, "I'm more valuable now than I would have been had I stuck around and graduated." is probably wrong, because you didn't understand why the education was useful. Maybe you weren't cut out for it, or maybe you just wanted money now. That's ok. Just don't preach it like it's the gospel truth on Slashdot.
Re:ACM finals aren't correlated with general CS ed (Score:3, Insightful)
Certainly true, but then again, that could also be said about almost all other such and similar competitions. Nevertheless, trying to discredit those people by simply stating that "we didn't go there to compete, but to have fun" is just silly, to say the least. If you go to a competition without the wish to win, you shouldn't be there, do something more fun, or someting more productive. At the end, they were who won the competition, and whatever you say, after the race all it counts is who came out winning.
Prior to highschool (yes, before highschool) I also was at some local, even regional programming contests, and we had to solve quite good and challenging - now thinking back to them - problems in a few hours. Even when I knew that I won't be able to solve one in time, I tried to come up with some tricky solutions. It was fun, even if some other way of fun than your fun
All in all, these contests have nothing to do with real life problems or with real life work, or whatever. Still, quick problem solution and a special algorithmic and mathematical (and combined) way of thinking can be very useful in both (i.e. real life and these competitions). Neither winning nor loosing such competitions means much in the real world, still, it can be a measure. And this is for college students, which means those that can find their fun in such coding, they will have fun. The rest can find their fun time someplace else.
Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank you...this was my thinking exactly. After the past 4+ years or so of hype AND actual practice of off-shoring of IT jobs...young students are seeing and perceiving that this is a lot of work and study, just to get a job with pay that is lowering, and a market that is tightening? Who can blame them? If you love computers, it isn't like you can't still play with them as a hobby, but, make a living some other way. For years the companies have been preaching that the code monkey jobs are going overseas to low wage computer 'sweat shops', but, the managerial and oversite jobs will stay in the US. Well, guess what? Students tend to listen to things like that. People are naturally going to go where the money is. If I were a student...I'd certainly be looking for what I could make a good living at see what interested me in that field...and work towards that goal.
The one good thing out of this is....rates for current IT workers should improve. The downside is...that major corporations will argue there is a shortage of US workers...and we NEED more H1-B visas, and maybe train some illegal-immigrants to improve their lot...and flood the US mkt. with cheap labor...and drive down the wages again. The problem is...the corps have the money to buy this policy, and unfortunately the govt. isn't representative of the people any longer, but, of the corp. with the biggest contribution.
We deserve it (Score:3, Insightful)
If we can't be bothered to do difficult things then we deserve to lose the rewards that difficult things reap. Now watch as the "Move to France then!" rebuttals start pouring in - underscoring the whole point of my post.
Re:More H1B cap lobbying (Score:1, Insightful)
I disagree with your significance rating. 200,000 computer programmers and electronics engineers are a lot of people. Most H1B visa holders I saw were programmers, and they were violating the visa (they were supposed to go home between changing jobs and reapply). Most were also terrible at what they did, and were nothing more than warm bodies -- however, they were always right at the margin, keeping the better paid, better trained citizens out of a job. And a good number of those have somehow gotten a green card.
But that doesn't matter now. There are more jobs now in India offered by American companies than there were H1B visas in the boom.
Re:Its Simple - Pay CS Majors More (Score:3, Insightful)
"Yes. The opportunity for great pay, IS there. IF you have Security Clearance, Clarence."
Yep...one of the last vestiges of good pay jobs is the DoD contracting circuit. But, pretty much no one has a clearance to start with....you get a job with a contractor house, and they will get you a temp clearance while they real one is being investigated and put together for you. Once you have that, you are good to go. The companies re-up your clearance every few years and pay for it...the trick is, if you want to go indie or switch jobs...do it while the clearance is recently renewed...
It is a bit hard to get a foot in the door...but, then again, no one STARTS into the business with a security clearance...just be good enough for them to want you, and they'll get the paperwork done for you. After that...it is easy to jump from job to job...for GOOD money.
You do need to negotiate well tho...so many of these companies with the contracts are 'bastardizing it' and trying to hire you as an 'employee', rather as a contractor or contract employee....don't let them get you on salary...negotiate for % of the bill rate....but, that's getting off onto a whole new thread....
Re:Job growth =! Entry-level job growth (Score:3, Insightful)
We're both solid programmers and/or computer scientists, but I don't think anyone talking in this forum is complaining about a lack of jobs for crappy graduates - although, perhaps, that *is* what this is really about. I don't care what the job market is, someone with the ability to succeed will, in something.
Now... whether this job I'm taking will still be around in 5 years, or if I should still be in it if I want a pay raise, that's an another story, and another part of why people aren't touching computer science.
Re:ACM finals aren't correlated with general CS ed (Score:3, Insightful)
That's like saying that because an American won an olympic medal in track and field that Americans are in better shape and run faster than the Chinese.
Re:Blame it on the .com bust and hype (Score:5, Insightful)
While business "believes" that CS workers are foundry workers. Most CS workers are creating new things every project, they don't forge the same hunk of steel over and over. As much as business wants CS to be a production job, its really a creation job, and the business leaders don't get it.
All this reverence in this country for business degrees is going to really come back to bite us. Innovation and invention is on the decline in this country, and without the new things and the technological innovation, all those business people will be left with nothing to manage, because eventually with all the creation going on overseas, enventually overseas companies will take all the companies (and their management) with them.
Bah. (Score:2, Insightful)
That tells me nothing! 2000 was the height of the dot-com bubble. Give me the numbers for planned enrollments from 1990 to 2000. And then 2000 to now! I bet it went up with the boom, shot down with the bust, and has been rising since.
Let's see.-Check-out lane. (Score:1, Insightful)
"1. People still smarting from the tech-bubble popping? Check.
2. New home machines much less accessible to proto-hackers than machines like the C64? Check.
3. Popular culture that denigrates "geeks" and "nerds" and makes it a social crime to get A's? Check."
4. Geeks and nerds have a superiority complex? Check.
5. Geeks and nerds have the social skills of a potato? Check.
6. Other countries are minting their own geeks and nerds? Check.
7. Geeks and nerds !== CS or technology. e.g. History nerd.
Numbers from 2000 (Score:4, Insightful)
What I'd like to see are multi-year numbers that give us a better idea of the trend, both pre- and post-bubble. 2000 was an anomaly. 2000 was unsustainable. 2000 was when things went kablooey. We don't want to go there again in a hurry, so quit talking about it.
article is misleading (Score:2, Insightful)
Lies, damned lies and statistics. Couple of random thoughts:
1. It is my observation that bright students in developing countries often gravitate to math/science fields at a higher rate than in the U.S. That isn't necessarily a good thing. While such countries may produce engineers and computer programmers at a high rate, they may produce doctors, research scientists, economists, etc. at a lower rate.
2. In China, India and Eastern Europe, my impression is that more bin-sorting goes on with regard to who can attend what university. In the U.S. you have bright, capable people spread out across more buckets. In India especially there is a well-defined pecking order among universities, with the very best students routed to the most presitigious school.
3. Having participated in the ACM contest at the regional level, the results aren't all based on raw talent. Extensive practice can give you a distinct advantage. It may be that the non-U.S. teams simply prepared better. Being poorly prepared for a contest doesn't mean the U.S. team members are generally incompetant.
4. If the ACM contest is more popular at non-U.S. universities, those countries may be better able to attract the top competitors from their respective talent pools. At the large state university I attended, tryouts were hardly advertised, and I knew many smart, talented people who just weren't interested in competing.
5. It may be a good thing that CS enrollment has dropped from 3.7% to 1.1%. When I was still in school, during the boom times, about 20-30% of my classmates probably shouldn't have been there. I shudder to think of the code they're producing right now.
The paradox of Soft-Eng supply/demand (Score:4, Insightful)
Having been through the job search process a few times (and having read the recent academic articles on the subject), it seems the problem is this. Employers in North America are no longer willing to help develop software professionals. In other professions, we see employers taking an active interest in professional development from the entry level up.
Lawyers article for a year, and have a well understood progression from articling student to partner. Throughout the process, the contributions made are appropriate for their level of progression and an appreciated, relevant part of the practice's business. As a result, the legal field has a downstream supply of experienced lawyers, and even students and fresh grads can find work.
By contrast, the tech industry seems to expect experienced developers to appear out of thin air. Industry participation in internship programs is down. Postings for entry-level and early-mid level positions are practically non-existent. Yet demand for 10+ yrs experienced developers is high. Well, guess what? Experienced developers don't just pop into existence. The industry recognizes that much of the innovative work (that they need experienced developers for) isn't amenable to offshoring. They need to recognize that by offshoring the entry-level grunt work, they are starving their future demand for experienced developers (and ultimately rendering future innovation far more difficult).
Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, I think there's a perception out there that I'm hearing from companies that the quality of a lot of big state-school CS programs is pretty dismal. Apparently -- and again, this is perception, which may or not be fact, but it's still important -- a lot of "Computer Science" grads couldn't tell a compiler from a debugger and wouldn't know C from SQL; their experience is maybe some web development or HTML stuff and a smattering of userland application experience. In short, the U.S. CS grads they're interviewing aren't getting experience in the stuff they need: DBA stuff, systems administration, and commercial development methodologies. Now I don't know what the curriculum is in modern CS programs, I haven't had any reason to look recently, but I'd be interested in knowing what it is, and whether the stuff I'm hearing is based on fact or just frustrated HR types who are getting the bottom of the barrel because they're under-offering.
Re:CS from the inside (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:2, Insightful)
Ack! (Score:2, Insightful)
Legislating it is an atrocious idea. The reason the companies hire out elsewhere is because it is economically advantageous. The solution to this isn't to tell the companies "don't act according to reason when presented with data; act against reason." The solution is to correct the conditions that are causing it to be more beneficial to hire out elsewhere (if that is a desired end... I don't care, myself, for the reasons stated herein). Adding a disincentive appears to accomplish this, but it is mere cookery that covers over the disease.
This is basically the same thing as telling a civil engineer to build a bridge over a 2000' river. He'll build a 2000' bridge (well, probably 2500' for stability, but you get what I mean). But wait! We've gotten funding for a 4000' bridge... and because of existing laws, we need to "make it to specifications!" So we tell the engineer to build a 4000' bridge over a 2000' river instead of changing (or better yet, removing) the ridiculous law. A multitude of laws doesn't make abuses fewer, it just makes them more obscure.
Legislation is the enemy of discretion. Discretion is the son of civil freedom.
Re:Blame it on the .com bust and hype (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are a programmer chances are you are going to be blessed with long hours sitting in the same cube day after day, death marches everytime a delivery needs to happen, and chances are your management chain is going to forget you when they are handing out the party trips, options and bonuses, because they get theirs first and the less they give you the more there is for them. I think they will be of the opinion that you should just be glad that they let you keep your job for the next round.
This is just how the food chain works in capitalism. The nearer you are to the top the better off you are and this is trending worse with each passing year. The disparity in compensation for executive versus workers has exploded in this country and it will ultimate lead to some form of collapse or rebellion. The new trend where executives can threaten to, or actually will, offshore your job, gives them further leverage to drive down worker's compensation and increase their own. There will eventually be a tipping point where a few percent will be filthy rich, everyone else will be hovering around the poverty line and eventually that 90+% will realized they've been had and they outnumber the rich fat cats.
If you like programming and like sitting in front of a computer, you don't want to get rich at it, and you can find an employer that doesn't suck its probably an OK career choice for you. Most people realize that in fact its not a career path with a lot of future in it and that is why more and more college students are rejecting it as a career path.
The fact that China and India are turning out so many CS grads is in itself a reason to reject it as a career path since it means the globalized market is being flooded, they can work for a lot less than you can thanks to cost of living disparity, and that means wages and working conditions are probably going to get progressively worse, not better.
-- Ed
It's not just CS!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ACM finals aren't correlated with general CS ed (Score:3, Insightful)
I also went to the ACM world finals. We didn't do that great, but we did alright, and we had fun. My university was one of the best in the US in CS, but there was never even a chance of our winning ACM overall, and we never thought there was.
The reason is exactly what you describe: the groups that are winning the contest right now are putting in immense effort, going over literally thousands of ACM-style problems. They spend hours a day on it. They have entire libraries of pre-coded functions and solutions that they can plug into all kinds of problems whenever necessary.
Now, in contrast, at my Big Name CS School, most student energy goes into our classwork and other CS-related areas, and the ACM contest is a hobby. The team is generally chosen by sending out a mass email to the CS department saying "Anyone want to be on our ACM team?" The first year I did it, they had to send out the email repeatedly because they couldn't actually find 6 people (two teams) to send to the regional contest. Once you're on the team, every 2 or 3 weeks we would meet to go over some problems. The ACM problems are fun and interesting, and require problem-solving and basic knowledge of algorithms, but they are not "computer science," and all of us knew it. You put code in those problems that you would be ashamed to put into a production system, because you're on a time limit and it works.
Bottom line, the US's "poor performance" in this contest is not indicative of poor education any more than the US's "poor performance" in the chess world during the cold war. Russia thought it was very valuable to have the best chess players be Russian (proving that Russians were smarter, etc.), so they threw money at it, and had their promising players study intensely, at the expense of a conventional education, focusing entirely on becoming the best chess players. American chess players, for the most part, still went through a normal highschool and frequently college education, and while some were very devoted to the game, hardly any studied it with the state-sponsored fervor of the typical Russian prodigy. And so what? If the goal of your life is to be good at chess, then the Russian model is better, and if the goal of your life is to be good at the ACM programming competition then you should spend hours a day studying old ACM problems, but if you want a good general education (or even a good CS education) that is probably not the best use of your time in college.
I've worked in industry, and now I'm in theoretical CS, and neither area requires thinking similar to the ACM competition. Those problems are great, and doing well in the contest requires knowledge and talent, but to be the best takes a very specific kind of knowledge that is not nearly as useful in any other area of CS.
This article is FUD.
Re:Good (Score:1, Insightful)
I definitely don't support outsourcing, but I think it's a little misunderstood, too.
Based on what I've heard from several people working in large companies, outsourcing isn't always just about the money. They've said that, all costs considered, it really doesn't save that much money. But the work ethic in certain countries is far better than what they've experienced here. Deadlines are met, micro-management isn't required, and the workers are willing to put in that proverbial 110% if needed. Now, they concede that in the long-run, it's probably not sustainable, and will cause problems when the project is handed off, but for projects that just need to get done now, it's the way to go. So perhaps it's not just price, but the price/performance ratio that keeps companies from hiring domestic...
I'm 20, and have been doing high-level IT consulting for a few years now. I dropped out of college while pursuing my CS degree (for personal reasons). I'd be lying to say that the reason I stick to IT rather than finish my degree is because of outsourcing, but the media and public at least make it seem like the market is evaporating. I think there will always be demand for CS majors domestically, but you better make damned sure you're not like all the paper MCSE's, and that you really know/are passionate about what you're doing.
Shortages Correct Underpricing! (Score:3, Insightful)
When the government counteracts the corrective force of the shortage, the government inevitably suppresses wages and salaries or prevents them from rising higher. This phenomenon is well explained in standard textbooks about economics.
The correct way to handle the shortage of high-tech labor is to prohibit the government from intervening in the labor market. Specifically, Washington should terminate the H-1B program. Washington should also terminate the the free flow of goods and services between the United States (which is a relatively free market) and (relatively) non-free markets like India and Mexico.
When the American government allows the free flow of goods and services (e.g., outsourcing) between India and the United States, the Indian government intervention that has destroyed the economy of India and that, hence, has produced millions of underemployed Indians damages the operation of the free market in the USA. Specifically, Indian workers in the non-free market of India now determines the pricing of labor in the American labor market.
Washington should promote and protect the operation of the American free market by allowing free trade between the United States and only other (relatively) free markets like Canada and Japan. The free market itself will correct any shortage of computer scientists by dramatically raising wages and improving working conditions, thus attracting more people to become computer scientists. Wages eventually will rise to a point at which the supply of computer scientists satiates the demand.
Similar comments apply to the market for unskilled labor. To resolve any labor shortage, the free market will automatically produce more unskilled labor by raising wages and improving working conditions -- if the government stops importing Mexican illegal aliens to eliminate labor shortages. When Washington floods the unskilled-labor market with illegal aliens, Washington inevitably damages the normal corrective force of a labor shortage and, hence, damages the operation of the free market.
Re:CS from the inside (Score:1, Insightful)
What CS problem might you encounter which doesn't have those elements!
How can you be competent to tackle an optimization problem using even the most elementary gradient descent type operation without a good grasp of calculus and differential equations (even if it is painful!) - and linear algebra is absolutely vital to the matrix maths used in Computer Graphic/Bayesian Inference/Circuit Synthesis.
Google's PageRank algorithm as an example - it might just be 'code' but to understand it you need to know that it involves multiplication of some huge sparse matrices - the last person I want working on my algorithms is someone who couldn't hack linear algebra at college.
xenophobic much? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do we have to ensure jobs for anyone who is even the most minimally qualified? If a company wants to bring in smart foreign workers, since they are smarter than the folks at home, then more power to them. By propping up poor CS students, we are doing the same thing the RIAA does that we hate so much: getting government legislation to keep around a failing business model/person.
I'm in my second year of a CS degree and I do support immigrants and having offices in other countries. I think Google does it the right way: hiring people in other countries for their remote offices, while at the same time, still hiring lots of Americans as well.
You may be marginalized in the short term, but in the long run, the globalization of knowledge jobs is a good thing.
Re:Blame it on the .com bust and hype (Score:2, Insightful)
What I find amusing about this post is that none of those companies would exist if they didn't hire the most creative people they could get their hands on. You don't become a market leader by judiciously applying a development methodology.
Re:Blame it on the .com bust and hype (Score:3, Insightful)
What is that saying? It is something like "revolution is just three meals away".
The problem with "revolution" in the US if you have never left the US in your life you have probably never seen someone miss three meals because they couldn't afford it. You certainly have never seen someone miss a weeks worth of food because they couldn't afford it if you have never left the US. A few people being really rich doesn't spawn revolutions. It takes broad discontent and despair to spawn a revolution. In a nation where you are more likely to die by a lightening strike then die of starvation and there are three cars for every four people, that just isn't going to happen. Suburban soccer mom's and dad's don't wield AK-47s. Ever.
If the US ever breaks, it will be because technology broke it. If we become so productive with robots and AI that humans stop being economical and unemployment soars, I could certainly see the capitalist system dismantling itself. If human work has no value, the capitalist system breaks. In a democracy, when the capitalist system breaks it is swept aside by a super majority.
Capitalism will certainly destroy itself one day. It isn't going to end in Marxist revolt though, and it won't die because a few are exceedingly rich. It is simply going to out produce itself. It will produce until it breaks the paradigm that human work has value. Once that happens a new system will be formed that is not based around human work having value. I don't really see this as a bad thing.
is CS really 'science'? (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Forces Up and Down (Score:2, Insightful)
First off, the real issue here appears to be lack of CS and Math-related research-style positions.
A quick search of job boards will show you that nobody wants to hire entry-level computer programmers / network admins, so anyone quoting a lack of bodies is BSing you. We've discussed this issue on /. before now.
The author may think that he's hit on an issue, but his arguments seem specious and his research is very shallow.
From TA:
Specious #1: OK, first, if China AND India have ONLY 3x the # of grads, then the US is doing great! China AND India have 2.4 billion people, the US has 0.4 billion people. So the US has 2x as many engineering grads per capita. Why is this number cause for alarm?
Specious #2:What's more, this isn't really the issue anyways! Because your regular CS grads aren't doing "innovative, ground-breaking research", they're programming Database front-ends and administering networks. What you really want to know about are your Masters and PhD grads, but he fails to provide any relevant numbers for these.
My experience: I looked in to taking a Masters in 2004 at my Provincial University (~30k students). I wasn't eligible. I graduated with a 4-year Honours Co-op degree and a B to B+ average. It turns out that they were so flooded with students (mostly foreign) that the required average was now an A and they even closed the application period 3 months early. They were turning away some of their own grads.
So if we've run out of profs and we're turning away interested grads, does that still mean that we're behind? What's really the issue? I'd say it's money.
CS work is difficult. It requires years of study to be correctly proficient and continuous study thereafter. And to top it off, most IT workers are putting in massive overtime and are generally overworked (esp. the Network guys). So IT workers want to be well-paid; but nobody wants to pay for this work!
General programming work is quite expensive and the ROI is usually long if there is one (some software projects have no ROI, they just need to be done). Software itself is expensive to create and productivity of staff varies wildly b/c the learning curve can be very steep. Nobody wants inexperienced IT staff, so IT workers want to be well-paid.
To make this even more expensive, computer programmers in the US are bringing in Internationally exorbitant rates (one IBM programmer for $125/hour or a 25-man team from India?)
So at the end of the day, where do you put the CS PhDs? Where are they going to work? What are you going to pay them? Of course if companies won't afford CS Bachelors what is the industry for CS PhDs? How many CS PhDs do we really need? Wouldn't we rather have the best brains go into Med studies (seems we're always at a Doctor shortage here in Canada)?
(Please if you have answers, I'd like to hear them, these are not meant to be rhetorical questions)