Comments on: Computer Science Enrollment is Going Down, and Taking Software Jobs With It

By: admin

admin — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 18:35:31 +0000

Thanks for the heads up on the dead link. It’s been fixed.

By: http://

http:// — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:14:38 +0000

One problem is that your link for the graph illustrating the drop in CS students is broken. Other than that, this article has been very helpful to me, I’m currently a CS major who has been assigned the very trying task of writing a paper about why outsourcing isn’t a threat to CS majors, your article has a lot of useful information to run with. Thanks! (It also made me feel much better about being a CS major!)

By: http://

http:// — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 03:08:09 +0000

The articles you cite for the number of “IT worker” jobs to be filled come from 2002, and possibly 2001. Has anything at all changed in the industry from 2001/2002 to 2007? Hmmm, I cannot think of anything, so let’s just stick with five year old data, shall we? The definition of IT worker turns out to be what ever anyone wants it to be. Indeed, the ITAA’s original estimate of 10 million IT workers in the US used a job classification so broad that it included cable modem installers, DSL line installers, and even operators of computer-controlled photocopy machines! At the peak of the dot bombs, the ITAA created their own study claiming there was a demand for 1.6 million new jobs to be filled. This claim was obviously bogus – the entire US was estimated to create a total of 2 million new jobs that year, meaning that 80% of all new jobs would have been IT jobs! A hilarious claim on its face! The ITAA estimated that 1.2 million IT workers would quit their jobs and go to another one, and that there would be 400,000 actual new jobs. The media, as usual, misread the ITAA study and ran with the sum: 1.6 million. Subsequent years showed there never was 400,000 new jobs – it was about half that number in the peak year of job growth. Now, Bob, citing 2002 era “IT worker” data, has confused “IT worker” with software engineer. Computer Science degrees (as well as several engineering, physics and math degrees, plus MIS/information systems degrees) are used to fill actual programming jobs. “IT workers” (using your 2002 data) includes tech support, network administrators and other categories that do not require a 4 year degree in any subject. It is certainly true that college students have made decisions of their own free will not to pursue CS anymore. 100% of the college students I have spoken with (and I’ve taught university courses so I’ve spoken with many of them) are well aware of the impacts of offshoring and H-1B inshoring. Quite a few would like to find a career in software development but are justifiably terrified of short careers or falling salaries or both due to an influx of imported labor from India and China, especially. These are not dumb students – to the contrary, they see better opportunities in other fields, including business/marketing, entrepreneurship, other fields of engineering, law and health care. To address demand for software developers, it would be helpful to start with contemporary numbers and talk to today’s students to find out why they are choosing careers with stable employment opportunities. Perhaps its because they are pretty smart after all.

By: Rob Walling

Rob Walling — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 01:35:06 +0000

Jacob, here are my responses to a few of your comment: >First, the “massive shortage of IT workers” >barely qualifies as a shortage, and certainly >isn’t “Massive!” On what are you basing this? >The IT/software industry has higher turnover >and burnout rates than your average >McDonald’s. Obviously you’re joking here, but I’ve never seen an actual number given to software burnout. Turnover is not a fair number, since many people leave for greener pastures as opposed to having a crappy job. >If you actually read the sources you cited at >the start of your article, you’ll see what IT >workers already know: it’s not that there >aren’t enough qualified candidates, the >problem is unrealistic company expectations. I’ll give you partial credit on this one — company expectations do play a large role in inflating the shortage. But let’s be honest, there is a shortage out there. Anyone who has looked for halfway decent developers knows this. >CS degrees do not make good programmers. 60% of CS majors become programmers. We need more programmers. More CS majors = more programmers. >The programmers who I have worked with who >didn’t have CS degrees generally aren’t the >super-genius-types working at Google, but most >are among the best in the field because they >are passionate about computers and >programming. Everyone has an anecdote about the smart guy they know who taught himself to program with nothing more than a thumbtack and a 9-volt battery, but the fact is that broad numbers don’t lie. I’ve known a lot of good programmers, some of whom had CS degrees and others who didn’t. The bottom line is that the majority of programmers have CS degrees. This is virtually indisputable. >For the majority of programming jobs out >there, an expensive, four year CS course >offers little that can’t be picked up in the >first 3-6 months as a junior programmer. If you read my article here: http://www.softwarebyrob.com/archive/2007/03/20 /Advice_on_How_to_Become_a_Programmer.aspx you’ll notice I don’t tout CS degrees as the end-all be-all for software developers. There are many other ways to become a developer, and a good one at that. However, we’re trying to solve a problem, and one possible approach to solving that problem is to encourage more people to enter our field through the CS gates.

By: http://

http:// — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:20:35 +0000

The first article you linked to has a quote highlighted in red about half-way down that sums up the “IT labor shortage” nicely: “(The ITAA study is) very misleading. If I can’t find a chef at the wage I’d like, it doesn’t mean there’s a shortage of chefs.” My bet is that if you do some digging, you’ll find that the people doing the ITAA research are probably connected to some lobbying group in favor of H-1Bs, outsourcing, or some other self-serving interest group trying to legislate it’s problems away. They certainly aren’t just doing this research for the public good… Some other good quotes from that article: “By studying a database of college graduate surveys, he found that only 19 percent of computer science grads are still in that field 20 years later–compared with 52 percent of civil engineers.” “Cappelli has cited Matloff’s research on IT attrition, and argues that employers are largely to blame for the problem. The industry has managed technology professionals woefully, Cappelli says, adding that IT work is often broken up into small, disconnected projects that result in a lousy work experience. ‘This approach to work organization violates basic principles of job design by creating narrow tasks where workers cannot tell what the overall goal is,’ he wrote in his paper.” “The “Bouncing Back” study itself points to a culture of poor techie retention.”

By: http://

http:// — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 21:39:57 +0000

Wow. There are so many problems with the logic in this article, that I can’t even pick that I don’t even know where to start. * First, the “massive shortage of IT workers” barely qualifies as a shortage, and certainly isn’t “Massive!” How many IT workers over the age of 30 are there in your company? If there’s a labor shortage, it isn’t due to a lack of qualified candidates. The IT/software industry has higher turnover and burnout rates than your average McDonald’s. More CS graduates will do nothing to help the root issue – in fact it will almost certainly make it worse because it will give companies even more young bodies to burn through before having to deal with a *real* labor shortage. * Also regarding the so-called “labor shortage” there is the issue of company expectations. If you actually read the sources you cited at the start of your article, you’ll see what IT workers already know: it’s not that there aren’t enough qualified candidates, the problem is unrealistic company expectations. How do they expect to fill jobs with requirements like “10 years of industry experience with a minimum 7 yrs as a lead developer on financial applications using C++, Java/J2EE, PHP, Perl, COM/COM+ and .NET/C#, ASP/ASP.NET, Oracle, SQL Server, and My SQL. Please do not apply unless you possess ALL of the required skills.” Kung Foo and molecular biology are optional but a real plus! By the way, the above was a listing for a job in San Diego, paying $75-90,000 DOE, which will just about pay for gas in Southern California. Need I say more? * CS degrees do not make good programmers. The programmers who I have worked with who didn’t have CS degrees generally aren’t the super-genius-types working at Google, but most are among the best in the field because they are passionate about computers and programming. For the majority of programming jobs out there, an expensive, four year CS course offers little that can’t be picked up in the first 3-6 months as a junior programmer. I can think of several more points, but I’m getting tired. In summary, I actively discourage people from getting into IT at all unless they’re really passionate about it and are fully aware of the hell they’re going to get into. And I absolutely discourage them from getting a CS degree, even if they’re super geniuses and want to work for Google some day. They’d be better served getting a useful degree in something like math, art or science and picking up the odd credit for Compilers 101 or whatever interests them.

By: http://

http:// — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 16:03:31 +0000

If you want to get more CS students then the subject matter should be introduced to students at a much earlier age at school (just like English, Maths, Sciences, History etc are). I didn’t study CS at all until I did my CS degree and I graduated in 1998. By the time your 18 to introduce CS is just too late. You either love or hate CS by then (or what ever you think it is!). Personally I don’t think more CS graduates is gonna benefit me as a software developer. And I’m not bothered about off shore companies doing my job. In my experience the project goes tits up because they are rarely properly managed.

By: Frank Kelly

Frank Kelly — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:02:21 +0000

We need to make CS look really sexy – get a bunch of big Tech companies together – have them pay Paris Hilton $1 Billion to marry a big-time CS geek. They’ll probably need to release a video a la Pamela Anderson and whatshisname – just focusing on Paris of course. Then watch enrollment skyrocket!

By: http://

http:// — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 08:28:51 +0000

Quote: “You could end up [...] constructing systems like Google Search that serve the needs of billions of people across the world in a fraction of a second…” Yes. Or you could work for some big hydrocephalous company optimizing their business workflows in ridiculously over-complicated and under-documented applications where each and every change takes a month to be agreed upon. Or you could work on shitty legacy codebases that are a nightmare to maintain. Or you could repetitively run SQL scripts to generate Excel sheets for business representatives. Or you will be ordered to use XSLT for data processing when a Perl five-liner would be sufficient. Or you will be begging for modern tools like CVS and a current version of your language’s runtime, only to be told that the old stuff has always worked and there’s no need to experiment with anything new. Or you will be patronized by people with less technical understanding, but higher up in the food chain. Or you will have to write the same old CRUD applications over and over again because of spec changes that somehow manage to overthrow all existing data models. Or you will run day-long database imports only to find that the special characters have been corrupted. What’s more likely? Read TheDailyWTF.com. There’s the real world. There’s the code you have to work with. There’s the managerial structure you have to fit in. Good luck.

By: Jonas Gorauskas

Jonas Gorauskas — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 23:04:58 +0000

Here is a thought: Compare the numbers of students graduating with a CS degree against those graduating with degrees in Math, Physics, Chemestry, Engineering disciplines, or even in the Social Sciences for that matter. Chances are that you are going to find a lot more Math and Science degrees doing software development then you will find CS degrees doing development. I have a degree in English and I am a Operations Engineer at Microsoft. This positions is very technically challenging and requires a lot of scripting skills. Why do you have to limit the candidate pool to CS degrees?

By: http://

http:// — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 22:11:33 +0000

Its a real shame that many of us developers are still treated like crap by the business side of the industry. Its hard to convince people to develop software when we are still treated as expendable.

By: http://

http:// — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 22:00:00 +0000

Saying CS degree is going to be “fun” and “interesting” and going to work on “cool stuff” is not accurate at all. Thats like saying being an actor is always exciting. That is simple not the case; obviously Brad Pitt has a great time acting but most actors play small dull roles. Just like Most CS people work in very very very boring projects. Every single programmer I know works in a cubicle. With long hours and do make a decent living. But if they were lawyers or part of managment they would make a lot more money. Why do we (Americans) need more CS people? Let the Pakistanis replace us I dont see any problem with that. I mean we dont have enough American Gardners and we are doing just fine with our imported help.

By: http://

http:// — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 21:51:38 +0000

Working in IT requires people to: 1) Work long hours. possibly weekends (My max is 40 hours without sleep and the senior manager involved still wanted me to stay a bit longer) 2) Be on call sometimes 24×7x365 and get woken up on Sunday at 5am. Yep the wife loved that. No the boss did not want to pay me overtime. 3) Continuously learning (hard won skills costing $1000s from a few years ago are worthless – Yes I am a Master Novell CNE in 2.2, 3.12 and 4 but no one will hire me for these skills) And what do you get in 20 years time when you are a burnt out wreck? Do you get respect like doctors, accountants, laywers or even plumbers? No, you get outsourced or worse replaced by a 16 year old know it all, who has leant the latest fad and is willing to work harder than you for a lot less cash and considers you to be a dinosaur. And then they wonder why no one wants to go into the industry? If I was 20 again (I am almost 40) I would be going into anything BUT IT. Prospective IT people: YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

By: http://

http:// — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 16:53:37 +0000

“Fair or not, the immigration policies are necessary for American companies to survive in the global economy.” This is a myth – usually repeated by H1B visa holders. I know a dozen really stellar US developers who don’t write software anymore. They make furniture, sell stuff, opened restaurants, etc… Know why? Because the companies aren’t offering decent wages for top talent anymore. The wages are continuing to shrink and when workers push back and say – I’m working for that, the employers go cry that there is a labor shortage and demand more H1B visas.

By: http://

http:// — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 16:45:52 +0000

You’re grasp of cause and effect isn’t too good. I’m a very experienced programmer/architect/manager. I’m unemployed. I’ve been at this since 1990. During the 90’s I saw my salary climb steadily. Since 2002, it has been in decline almost as fast. The reason for this is loss of bargaining power. I’m being asked to do more for less and if I don’t knuckle under and do it, then the company will cry ‘labor shortage’ and lobby for another H1B who will work for the peanuts they are offering. With such a setup, why would anyone enter the field? The US Government is helping your adversary by undermining your bargaining position. The reason I’m not working is that I’m not going to take the pay cuts being offered. Screw ‘em. Last time I got an offer and produced my requirements I got back “Oh no, that’s a CEO’s salary” Well I hope you CEO can write software then because I’m not gonna. The answer is not more students. More US developers will reduce the H1Bs at the expense of the salaries of the current labor pool. Either way, the true free market effect – lower supplies means higher prices – is being negated by your congressmen. The current immigration bill has a lovely clause that will double the H1B visa allocation again and screw you even more. Be sure to write and tell them how you feel.

By: http://

http:// — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 16:34:11 +0000

The problem is not just that there are fewer computer science majors. I was a CS major during the height of the dot com boom, from 1998-2001. There were 600 undergrads in the CS program. There were quite a few good programmers though I imagine a lot of them would have been in the program anyway. There were quite a few mediocre ones drawn in by the lure of being a dot com millionaire. And most of them were just dreaming of riches and figured “I know how to type already, how hard could the rest of it be?” The worst part, it was a state school running a Java certification shop. I think the real problem is not the lack of CS students exactly. It is the US’s lack of quality education in our public schools. Other than in really rich school districts, High Schools are little more than diploma factories(again, I am a product of one of those diploma factories) while I met international students while in college who had received better educations in High School than I was getting in college and these were people that traveled halfway around the world to go to a state school(imagine the ones that are in MIT, etc). It is not unfair immigration policies that are hurting American programmers, it is the fact that with America’s mediocre education system that they never had a chance to begin with. Fair or not, the immigration policies are necessary for American companies to survive in the global economy.

By: http://

http:// — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 16:31:56 +0000

I think these fears are ridiculous: . More people are sophisticated computer users than ever before. Recent data from Pew suggests that the majority of teenagers have built web sites. . Encouraging majoring in CS at University, especially to serve the labor market, is just advocating vocational training. If more people get a liberal arts education, I doubt the world will be worse off. . Most fields now, like linguistics, biology, physics and so forth require sophisticated computer programming skills in subdisciplines. So people are getting training in advanced programming, just not in the CS department.

By: Chodeo

Chodeo — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 16:18:44 +0000

Hmmm… I think I disagree with your assessment that increase CS enrollement would benefit engineers in the field. Personally, I really enjoy the job market being tight. Until off shore firms figure out a virtual way to sit down with a client at a white board and diagram their business process, or how to take their client out to a virtual pub for a virtual beer, I am not at all concerned with the off shore thing.