[HN Gopher] The computer science degree isn't dead
___________________________________________________________________
The computer science degree isn't dead
Author : jnord
Score : 239 points
Date : 2026-06-10 01:33 UTC (4 days ago)
HTML web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
TEXT w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| le-mark wrote:
| > The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently placed
| unemployment for recent CS graduates in the United States at 6.1
| percent, with computer engineering graduates at 7.5 percent.
| Compared to philosophy majors at 3.2 percent and art history
| graduates at 3.0 percent, those figures look alarming.
|
| Alarming doesn't begin to describe it. This is an existential
| crises for our industry. The situation for entry level has been
| dire for some time. Those of us who have decades experience have
| nothing to worry about; the companies who replace juniors with AI
| are doomed. It takes years to gain proficiency with art of
| software engineering. Who will replace us? Or what am I missing?
| JCTheDenthog wrote:
| I think we're going to see a big scramble to pick up the pieces
| in a few years when a bunch of vibe-slopped houses of cards
| come crashing down. I imagine it will be like the demand for
| COBOL developers but on a much more massive scale.
| LastTrain wrote:
| A few major failures will scare the risk mitigating bejesus
| out of some kinds of businesses, but maybe AI will be better
| than us at fixing those kinds of problems by then.
| genxy wrote:
| It is, but that isn't how it will be used. The problem
| isn't the tech, never was, it is how the greedy and stupid
| deploy it.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I sure hope you're right
|
| I'm worried the slop can remain irrational longer than I can
| remain solvent
| dyauspitr wrote:
| You know that's not going to happen. Most of us are past the
| denial stage now, come join us...
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Remember OpenClaw?
|
| You know why nobody talks about it anymore? Because the
| project has been vibe coded to death in the span of a few
| months.
|
| Not only will it happen, it's literally happening right now
| in front of our eyes.
| aroman wrote:
| Do you have any evidence that the code quality of
| OpenClaw is to blame for its decline in popularity?
|
| I would say far more likely is that its creator was
| acqui-hired and Anthropic banned OpenClaw usage.
|
| The reality is that AI is both capable of producing
| sloppy code and capable of cleaning it up, if directed to
| do so, just like humans.
|
| And, just like humans, code quality is very rarely the
| make or break factor between success and failure in
| business, much less popularity.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| In the case of vibe-coded slop like OpenClaw it's not a
| question of some vague notion of "code quality", it's a
| case of the software shitting the bed and not working
| anymore, with no recourse of fixing it. (Neither humans
| nor LLMs have the context window to analyse and fix tens
| of millions of lines of code slop.)
|
| > and Anthropic banned OpenClaw usage
|
| If OpenClaw wasn't broken it would just use a standard
| token API.
|
| But see above - as software it is fundamentally broken
| and unfixable.
| JCTheDenthog wrote:
| Then why did it take Anthropic over a year just to fix the
| flickering issue in one of their main products when they
| have internal access to the latest and greatest models?
| vlod wrote:
| ThePrimeagen just talked about it on his podcast:
|
| "I Think They Are Lying To You":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfYsSFY4l18
| ekidd wrote:
| COBOL was mostly outsourced to India, and it's a _terrible_
| professional path for anyone in the EU or US, and has been
| since the Y2K bugs got fixed at the last minute.
|
| (And probably a bad path in India, too, but I have no data
| one way or the other. It's just that all the excellent Indian
| devs I know use almost exactly the same tech stacks I do.)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| And since big-name companies will be dealing with this,
| nobody will get blamed for not seeing this train barreling
| down the tracks towards them.
| upbeat_general wrote:
| I think that figure (haven't verified it but assuming it's
| true) isn't complete. It hides who and where those people are -
| for example, I imagine art history skews towards higher ranked
| schools in the first place.
| rockskon wrote:
| Oh good lord not that statistic again.
|
| Left unstated is what jobs philosophy and art history majors
| take.
|
| There's more computer scientists working in computer science
| than there are philosophy or art history majors working in
| philosophy or art history.
| frollogaston wrote:
| The article mentions this. Unsurprisingly, the CS grads are
| more likely to get jobs that require a degree.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Philosophy and history majors are for people who have no idea
| what they want to do. So a decent job in any field is as good
| as any other.
|
| CS majors are working towards employment in a specific
| sector, and aren't likely to accept anything else very
| readily.
| shagie wrote:
| https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:...
| (note: Latest Release: February 4, 2026, based on data from
| 2024)
|
| Yes, this has unemployment computer engineering at #2 with 7.8%
| and computer science at #5 at 7.0%.
|
| Philosophy is at 5.1% unemployment.
|
| The next column is _also_ important to look at - the
| underemployment rate. Is the graduate in a profession that
| requires the degree. The underemployment rate
| is defined as the share of graduates working in jobs that
| typically do not require a college degree. A job is classified
| as a college job if 50 percent or more of the people working in
| that job indicate that at least a bachelor's degree is
| necessary; otherwise, the job is classified as a non-college
| job.
|
| Philosophy has a 47.1% underemployment rate. Half of the
| graduates with a philosophy degree aren't employed in a job
| that requires a college degree.
|
| Underemployment for computer engineering is at 15.8% (3rd
| lowest) and computer science is at 19.1% (9th lowest).
|
| If you want a unemployment rate for computer science that
| matches philosophy the answer is easy - hold your nose and take
| the front desk receptionist job.
|
| Also... sort by "median wage early career." Computer
| engineering and computer science are #1 and #2 at $90k and
| $87k. There's something important there too - most college
| graduates are not getting $100k/year jobs. That expectation of
| Big Tech wages out of college and turning one's nose up at a
| job that offers the median claiming that "it isn't competitive"
| may be contributing to the unemployment rate.
|
| There isn't an existential crisis there. Most college graduates
| are finding jobs in the profession and computer science and
| engineering (from that data) are the highest paying college
| majors.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| There is an image crisis. Yes, it's not a badly paid
| profession. But the perception that it's a dead end will lead
| to a sharp drop off in the student numbers.
| Schlagbohrer wrote:
| I'm glad you pointed this out because I think the difference
| is due to philosophy grads being ready and willing to enter
| the workforce as a welder or an au pair or a restaurant
| manager, whereas a CS grad is gonna hold out for a CS job.
|
| Source: all the B.A. Philosophy grads I know who entered
| basically any job they could get, often including the trades,
| and knew during their degree that that would be their path.
| But wow are they more interesting to talk with and more well
| rounded than a tech-head who turned up their nose at their
| humanities prereqs during university and as a result know
| nothing about the world outside of their narrow field.
| keiferski wrote:
| Philosophy major here that went from working in a bakery,
| to sales at a large apparel printing company, to writing
| and marketing at startups.
|
| I do wonder if CS grads are too often narrowly focused on
| "tech" companies and not on companies that need software.
| bluGill wrote:
| Software tends to be complex enough that you need a lot
| of people and thus a tech company. It rarely makes sense
| for a company to make their own software that they only
| use to internally. Many non tech companies makes their
| own software but it is shipped to customers as part of
| the product
| keiferski wrote:
| Eh it depends. I've worked at / with a lot of more
| traditional non-tech companies and you'd be amazed at how
| a lot of the software looks like Excel circa 1995.
|
| I guess they could be using third party software but it
| seems like often they are just using an ancient thing
| they built themselves.
| bluGill wrote:
| That tends not to be written by software people so we can
| ignore it even though you are correct.
| christoff12 wrote:
| People who write software are software people lol. A lot
| of stuff is just old.
|
| Accountants and marketers didn't build the legacy tools
| teams are stuck with.
| saturn8601 wrote:
| Sounds like you are picturing WinForms in your mind (Was
| so awesome to create forms and ship really customized
| usable software quickly). Does business software really
| need to be super pretty?
| keiferski wrote:
| No definitely doesn't need to be pretty. My point is more
| that building and managing this stuff often requires a
| programmer. It's not "cool" or cutting edge but it's a
| job.
| saturn8601 wrote:
| >It rarely makes sense for a company to make their own
| software that they only use to internally.
|
| From my understanding China operates this way. They
| supposedly have such an oversupply of software engineers
| that every company just build all the software they need
| internally. Now with AI they have supposedly been super
| aggressive in adopting it that its probably even more of
| the case that everyone is building most of what they need
| internally.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Unemployment is based on the amount looking. I gotta say, how
| many philosophy students do you know actively looking for jobs?
| Now ask yourself why you think it's zero.
| toyg wrote:
| Such a correction was always going to happen. Coders always
| were the blue-collar workers of the 21st century, and capital
| ruthlessly optimises for profit. Where you once needed
| thousands of workers to run an assembly line, you now have
| dozens; where you once needed hundreds of programmers to run a
| big SaaS, you will now have a handful. It was always
| inevitable.
|
| That doesn't mean we're all dead or anything - factory workers
| still exist, developer jobs will still exist. They'll just be
| far fewer than they used to be.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| > They'll just be far fewer than they used to be.
|
| I do tend to agree. Though at the current pace of change I
| don't know if we can take it for granted.
|
| As a recent example, I was on a chat with the two most
| experienced technical people in our company and the original
| developer of a feature trying to work out why we were getting
| a null pointer exception in a very specific case. Of course
| we had a fix, just a guard against the null pointer, but I'm
| always uncomfortable with not knowing the underlying cause.
|
| I kept digging while someone promoted the fix. Eventually
| ruling out two of our original theories as to why it
| happened. Until eventually someone just asked Cursor which
| spit out a theory which matched the symptoms perfectly and
| which we quickly reproduced locally.
|
| I still think we'll need some kind of human who lives in that
| wide space between the 95% of the population who couldn't get
| Excel to sum a list of numbers and the machines but the
| industry will be unrecognisable.
| Larrikin wrote:
| In your example you knew the issues with the original fix,
| had some ideas to the cause, even if they were wrong, and
| generally knew where to look.
|
| In my experience the LLM when given the ticket would have
| done the original null pointer guard fix given the bug.
| Only under direction does it ever dig deeper and for me
| it'll often go down some wrong paths unless I tell it to go
| somewhere else. It's great when it gets it right the first
| time. But that is rarely the case and usually you just get
| good enough if you don't care to go further.
| rienbdj wrote:
| Can't sustain six figure salaries because current prompts
| are wrong.
| timoshishi wrote:
| I heard prompt engineer is the six figure job of the
| future
| rienbdj wrote:
| Cut juniors for AI
|
| Save money
|
| Invest in market share
|
| Increase market cap
|
| Hire the last remaining seniors at higher rates but only where
| needed
|
| Great time to be a shareholder or staff level engineer. For
| everyone else, the ladder has been pulled.
| deadbabe wrote:
| I had a frank conversation with a hiring manager about it.
|
| What he said was even if we hire juniors, juniors using AI are
| never going to rise to the level of our current seniors who
| built decades of experience without AI.
|
| So basically, today's juniors are not worth investing in. Until
| society really sorts itself out with responsibile AI usage in a
| way that still develops independent professional skills, there
| is no point in hiring juniors. They will just be a more
| expensive version of whatever AI agent they use, which can be
| used directly by seniors anyway.
|
| Companies today do not have to really worry about who replaces
| the seniors, that will be a problem for newer companies in 20
| years or so. In time a solution will arrive naturally.
| mxkopy wrote:
| I love how the basic expectation of having a job and the life
| altering circumstance of not having one factors into this not
| even a little bit
| deadbabe wrote:
| Not sure what you mean, juniors are a poor ROI these days.
| JesseTG wrote:
| They mean that juniors have bills to pay, too.
| musicale wrote:
| > juniors using AI are never going to rise to the level of
| our current seniors who built decades of experience without
| AI
|
| this does not seem to be an argument for requiring junior
| employees to focus on using AI tools
| vanuatu wrote:
| thats interesting, the HMs where I work love hiring juniors
| (who pass the bar) because they are so AI-native
|
| the more experienced engineers can help with setting
| guardrails and mentorship, but the juniors come unconstrained
| by priors on how to use ai in creative ways to solve all
| sorts of business problems.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Decades of experience here, and have not worked in over two
| years. Tell me again how I have nothing to worry about.
| aduwah wrote:
| Experience does not really matter. What matters is a few
| shiny corp names and titles in your CV. No-one cares with
| merit these days
| gottorf wrote:
| > Alarming doesn't begin to describe it. This is an existential
| crises for our industry.
|
| In my (admittedly vibes-based) opinion, this is just a result
| of there being a huge supply of CS grads in this country due to
| it being popularized as a path to a stable, high-paying job.
| Those degrees are now more often than ever held by people who
| aren't necessarily passionate about, or good at, the field.
|
| The signal-to-noise ratio in hiring, therefore, is worse than
| ever. AI exacerbates the problem, of course. But I don't think
| this is an existential crisis; I think the market will sort
| itself out, as those less-qualified entrants leave.
| mamidon wrote:
| This may be a cynical take, but as someone with 10+ years of
| experience why should I care if companies are too short sighted
| to value and train juniors?
| antonvs wrote:
| Where do you draw the line on that attitude? Do you not care
| about global warming because in your lifetime, you're probably
| not going to experience an unsurvivable wet bulb temperature
| where you happen to live?
| graphime wrote:
| > Where do you draw the line on that attitude?
|
| I draw the line at things that directly impact my net worth.
|
| > Do you not care about global warming because you're
| probably not going to experience an unsurvivable wet bulb
| temperature where you happen to live in your lifetime?
|
| Correct. I don't care about global warming or climate change.
| antonvs wrote:
| Do you believe in ethics or morality?
|
| If I decide you're having a negative impact on my net
| worth, can I come to your home and shoot you in the head?
|
| It seems we need a remedial class in morality here, where
| we work up to you understanding the golden rule. But
| perhaps you're not capable of understanding that. Is
| euthanizing you then the only option?
| LastTrain wrote:
| > I draw the line at things that directly impact my net
| worth.
|
| That is a really interesting admission upon which to
| evaluate your other comments here...
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >Correct. I don't care about global warming or climate
| change.
|
| I suppose that makes a change from it's not happening or it
| is happening but it isn't man made or it is man made but we
| can't do anything about it.
| joshmoody24 wrote:
| So you don't care about things that indirectly affect your
| net worth? Credit score? Your overall health? How many
| friends you have?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Your assessment is incorrect.
|
| Climate change will have huge effects on everyone's net
| worth. The process has already started.
|
| Your failure to understand this will not change how it
| affects you.
| asdff wrote:
| Have you been formally diagnosed as a sociopath yet?
| Terr_ wrote:
| To twist another saying: "Employers can be short-sighted for
| longer than I can delay my rent payment."
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| Why would their rent payment be affected in any way? They
| aren't a junior
| Terr_ wrote:
| Wouldn't it be uncharitable to assume that the commenter is
| totally selfish and short-sighted? :p
|
| It may be a cliche, but it's all connected. In a general
| sense, programmers at different experience levels are at
| least _partially_ substitutable goods. A crash in wages on
| one group will probably affect that other.
|
| In a more specific sense, companies won't pay seniors for
| skills at mentoring and managing the juniors they won't
| have.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Longer term this kind of stupidity will destroy the
| economy from both ends.
|
| Unless there's an unexpected jump in AI IQ, vibe-coded
| projects will start to unravel, but the companies won't
| have the resources to hire the human coders needed to fix
| the code.
|
| Meanwhile a lot of people with real skills and ability
| will have been unemployed long enough to depress spending
| across the entire economy.
|
| Those same people would have been prime drivers of
| spending, because they were one of the few demographics
| with significant disposable income and the ability to
| afford high rents and property prices.
|
| You can see where this is going.
|
| The people running the companies can't. Or if they can,
| they maybe believe they have an escape route.
|
| That will turn out to be a fantasy too.
|
| The problem isn't AI. it's an economy running on fantasy
| numbers that are unmoored from economic and physical
| reality.
| rockskon wrote:
| Because eventually you'll get to the point where you've too
| much work to do and there's not enough people to delegate it
| to.
|
| Hope you like being overworked!
| strken wrote:
| It's a self-solving problem, though. At that point, every
| remaining senior+ engineer will be paid a bajillion dollars
| (like they are now) and companies will start to invest in
| actual training.
| rockskon wrote:
| That worked so well for the finance system finding new
| Cobol programmers!
| strken wrote:
| I am not convinced the finance system is struggling to
| find Cobol programmers. They certainly don't seem willing
| to pay them more on job listings.
|
| When you read an article about a "skills shortage" it's
| usually more of a pay shortage and/or a terrible working
| conditions overage.
| j7ake wrote:
| It is better to be overworked than underworked
| LastTrain wrote:
| Sure. Why give a shit about anything really.
| frollogaston wrote:
| You're framing it like they're making a mistake, so if they
| are, yeah that's not good for you either.
|
| Idk though, really seems like the "AI layoffs" are just corps
| shedding headcount bloat accumulated in 2020-23.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| It would actually be good for us...
|
| I never understood why software engineers were so excited about
| open source and teaching everyone to code.
|
| Why aren't we more like doctors or lawyers?
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Why aren't doctors or lawyers more like us?
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Because they have professional bodies that act as
| gatekeepers.
| MAustriaGA wrote:
| Because they like to monetize their worth.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| That'd be 200 bucks for an answer.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Because engineers enjoy tinkering more than anything, and
| they love telling everyone how fun tinkering is, and there
| was a narrative that tinkering was empowering and everyone
| should know how to do it, with a side order of "And if you
| get really good you can build a business and become super-
| rich too."
|
| But the reality is law is primarily about social capital,
| medicine has more of that than most people realise, and
| computer people love to pretend social capital is something
| other people do, and they don't need to.
| asdff wrote:
| Ideally you want society to continue to function after you
| retire unless you plan on jumping off a cliff at 62.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| If you're going to get a CS degree, do it in a master's degree
| program. Get your undergraduate degree in anything else that
| involves at least some mathematics, I'd recommend physics,
| chemistry, molecular biology, planetary sciences - probability,
| calculus, linear algebra. Engineering is somewhat more on the
| vocational side, but that works too.
|
| Why? You don't narrow your scope at the beginning!
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| In what way are those undergraduate degrees any less narrowing
| of scope than a CS undergraduate degree?
| lelanthran wrote:
| > In what way are those undergraduate degrees any less
| narrowing of scope than a CS undergraduate degree?
|
| They aren't, but your specialist knowledge draws from _two_
| disciplines.
|
| If you undergrad is in CS, your specialist knowledge is in
| _one_ discipline exclusively.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Isn't it normal to study mathematics in a computer science
| bachelor program in USA?
|
| That country never ceases to astonish me lol.
| kubb wrote:
| They run degree mill programs because their universities are
| for profit.
| saturn8601 wrote:
| Most universities are not for profit at least the ones that
| are considered any good.
| diek wrote:
| FWIW, any accredited CS degree program in the US will have
| rigorous math and science requirements:
| https://www.abet.org/accreditation/accreditation-
| criteria/cr...
|
| I don't think it was worded very well, but I think the parent
| comment was saying, "the bulk of CS can be covered in a
| masters program, so take an undergrad degree that has the
| same overlap in math/science, but a different focus". I'm not
| sure I agree, spreading the absorption of that knowledge over
| 4 years can be beneficial.
| drstewart wrote:
| I like how you don't know the answer but then just assume
| anyway lol
|
| Guess the standards in your country for logic must be really
| low lol
| LtWorf wrote:
| USA never ceases to astonish me regardless of the presence
| of compulsory mathematics courses in computer science
| programs. I guess you didn't take logic :)
| floxy wrote:
| Let's check:
|
| https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/www-cse-
| public/ugrad/curr...
| mkl95 wrote:
| > probability, calculus, linear algebra
|
| All of these are mandatory in EU universities' CS programmes
| and are taught with relative rigor, particularly linear
| algebra. Calculus is called "Analysis" and usually covers all
| of Calc I plus a bit of Calc II.
| trinix912 wrote:
| Can confirm (everything down to calculus being called
| analysis), we also had a surprisingly difficult probability
| and statistics class.
| mkl95 wrote:
| I had a hard time with probability and stats, although it
| was way more mind expanding than calculus.
| zerobees wrote:
| My impression is that in the past year or so, IEEE journals have
| been leaning pretty heavily into low-quality, AI-generated
| articles. And looks like this author produced not one, not two,
| but three career advice columns in a single day - impressive:
|
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/u/brian-jenney
| senderista wrote:
| IEEE has been putting their name on garbage journals and
| conferences since forever.
| musicale wrote:
| This is unfortunately true. There are tons of IEEE
| spamferences. Which is a shame because there are also good
| IEEE-sponsored (or co-sponsored) conferences (I find ISCA,
| Hot Chips + Hot Interconnects, and SC to all be interesting
| systems conferences, for example.)
|
| However IEEE Spectrum is neither a journal nor a conference -
| it's the flagship magazine of the IEEE.
|
| My impression of IEEE Spectrum (as well as CACM) is that they
| still feature good technical papers and content written by
| domain experts, but they also feature junk/filler "articles"
| and blog posts written by serial contributors who seem to
| optimize article quantity over quality. Often the title or
| topic is the only good part.
| Schlagbohrer wrote:
| Good sleuthing, this really lowers the IEEE's quality in my
| eyes
| Kwpolska wrote:
| IEEE Spectrum is one of the many things that is always high on
| the HN front page, but is never worth reading.
| tietjens wrote:
| That's true but often the discussion in the comments are.
| stodor89 wrote:
| Open link. Get hit with corposlop imagery. Close article
| and go read HN comments.
| taurath wrote:
| If one is thinking about not getting a degree and trying to go
| straight to work, as someone who did so (albiet out of poverty
| rather than choice) but didn't end up like Zuck, please heed my
| warning:
|
| Social capital matters more than just about anyone who has a
| degree can understand and tell you or mentor you about, because
| the majority of them have always had it, and they tend not even
| to interact with people without it.
|
| It is a signal about your wealth (and your families ability to
| deploy it for you), from which follows your stability, your
| intelligence, your taste, your willingness to play the game, and
| your belonging in the club. These matter more than EVER in the
| business world - I've never seen a time when tech is less about
| engineering than right now.
| ehnto wrote:
| To a much smaller extent due to where I live, I noticed this
| too. From merely the fact that I had a (local economy relative)
| high paying software job and that I could "make stuff happen"
| for people with capital or people in the "boys club", I was
| introduced to an entirely different layer of the city I had no
| idea about. I noticed how effortlessly the signals transfer and
| how it all feels very meritocratic, you don't even notice the
| layer and you just see the people. Until someone who's not in
| that layer shows up, and suddenly the doors close, the
| conversation chills and the barriers to the layer become
| evident.
|
| I am very curious how this changes for young technologists in
| an AI era, where maybe non-technical people in this layer no
| longer see a self made technologist as a value add to their
| cohort.
|
| I purposely use technologist over software developer, since I
| feelnthe generalist self-made developer typically commands an
| intuitive breadth of skills not just programming.
|
| I also didn't make out like Zuck, though I am happily working
| and making games on the side.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Honestly I do the reverse of that. I dress like shit and when
| introducing myself I specifically use the word "immigrant"
| rather than "expat" because signalling high social position
| attracts people who want something from me but don't offer
| anything in return.
| NathanielK wrote:
| Not surprised to hear this from anal_reactor.
| mc32 wrote:
| immigrants are people who tend to stay and don't have plans
| to return to their home countries. Expats are temporary
| immigrants typically paid by their company to move and
| intend to move back to their home countries once the
| assignment is over.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Ain't nobody calling seasonal minimum-wage workers
| "expats".
| mc32 wrote:
| True, but I'm talking about native English speakers.
| Those people likely have their own terminology in their
| own language to describe themselves.
|
| Also an ex-patriate is typically in the professional
| class. So those "English" teachers who teach in Japan,
| etc., may think of themselves as ex-pats or try to
| frequent "ex-pat" hangouts but they aren't necessarily
| because of two things: one, they have not been working at
| their home office and then transferred and typically they
| do not hold prelesional degrees -though they may hold
| "certificates" or whatever. They are in effect temporary
| workers on a limited stay visa, often needing annual
| renewal by hopping to a third country to have it renewed
| themselves. For ex-pats all this or arranged by their
| employers.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| "expat" is rich, "immigrant" is poor. People use the word
| "expat" to signal they're rich, or at least they want to
| be.
|
| Here, your theory goes out of the window.
| mc32 wrote:
| Someone from the US who moves to France for good is not
| an expat.
| freehorse wrote:
| Looking at online dictionaries there is no hint of
| temporariness [0], [1]. Wikipedia refers to it as "a
| person who resides outside their native country" and
| often referring to "a professional, skilled worker or
| artist from a wealthy country" [2], which matches exactly
| the way I see it used. Similar to other commenters here,
| I also mostly encounter it being used by skilled, first
| world professionals to separate themselves "from the
| plebs" of poorer immigrants.
|
| PS I do not disagree that some use cases could include
| temporariness (wikipedia mentions academic discourse and
| something about some british civil workers a few decades
| ago) but this is by far neither the unique nor the most
| common way it is used nowadays, nor how historically it
| has often been used long before.
|
| [0] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/englis
| h/expat...
|
| [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/expatriate
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expatriate
| varjag wrote:
| Expat is an Anglo work migrant, they insist on the
| distinction as it's in their titular language.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Not to this extreme but most people around me don't know
| what I do for money or explore in unallocated time
|
| I'm fashionable and have a nice place but _nothing_ says
| "software engineer that earns more than most doctors"
|
| People that wake up next to me think I earn about 1/3rd to
| 1/5th of what I earn, I don't correct them
|
| But at the same time I do want just a little bit of the
| hypergamy. Unfortunately, broadcasting to that sentiment
| seems incompatible with staying low key and attracting more
| collaborative people, but it could be fun which is my goal.
| I've seen how doctors are treated in the attraction game,
| its strange and downright scary to see some people code
| switch around them to be seen as eligible mates, I could
| have that. I've been analyzing it and it has very little to
| do with perceived utility, and almost solely to do with
| perceived earning potential combined with the idea of other
| people wanting them.
|
| When I've spent extended time in small towns I inherit that
| treatment. In small towns across the US, you have people
| aspiring to hook up with entry level military conscripts
| because "they make so much money". When you earn an entire
| order of magnitude more than that, it's almost impossible
| to blend in and people can tell, so you get the code
| switching hypergamy sentiment.
|
| This is the closest parallel to what people are talking
| about in this thread, because I'm rarely networking.
| Recruiters reach out to me over email and linkedin and
| thats it. Do work, get paid, sign off.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| I'm gay so I have easy access to sex and TBH I don't
| really have much sex, almost nothing at all, because sex
| with most people just isn't pleasant. I cannot derive
| pleasure from it if there's no connection, and "wow I
| love your car" isn't connection.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| As a straight male that does well with dating and
| relationships I am quietly fascinated by this aspect of
| gay culture and relationships. It changes so many
| dynamics.
|
| Thankful for the group of guys at our neighborhood bar
| where we play gays vs straights pool and rib about this
| stuff. Lol, just wanted to share that anecdote tbh
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I enjoy the challenge and the sex. I think the speed
| limits in the hetero space to be with attractive women
| keep it interesting for nearly a lifetime. Things devalue
| when abundant, but it takes a lot for it to become
| abundant.
|
| But even then, it's not disinteresting instantly, I'm
| around a lot of people with similar libidos and interest
| in sustained variety, who have achieved that, and brought
| similar people together. So I could really only say thank
| you for your personal account, it's a very individual
| journey not reflective of everyone else's experience with
| abundance.
|
| I haven't really done much with material things, I live
| in and buy what's comfortable for me. But I know there is
| a large crowd that finds shiny material things attractive
| and its always an option when I want to optimize for
| that.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| emphasis on attractive, read as in-demand, difficult to
| stand out amongst
| chadgpt3 wrote:
| if you're thinking of banging ugly women just so you can
| bang - that's not how any of this works
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| I don't see how this isn't a massive net negative to you
| personally other than avoiding occasional odd conversation.
| You can have genuine conversations both personally and
| professionally with all sorts of people even if you don't
| "dress like shit". The expat versus immigrant thing is
| interesting but I assume most can see through that. Sorry
| to sound critical not really my intention but this is a
| very interesting approach. It makes the most sense if
| you're already set in a great gig or already made your
| money, no?
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Programming used to be attractive career exactly because
| you'd get a good job based on skills alone. There was no
| "you need to wear a suit to impress the client" bullshit:
| just show up, do a good day of honest work, go home with
| a fat paycheck. When you look at things from this
| perspective, signaling low-status also signals "I'm here
| because I can program", while signaling high-status also
| signals "I'm here to play office politics". So
| effectively, signaling low-status is a hidden signal that
| only other high-status people will recognize, while
| signaling high-status is a bluff that low-status people
| do.
|
| It seems a little complicated but the idea itself is
| nothing new. When you go to a ghetto you'll see golden
| chains, expensive cars and other shiny shit. Go to a
| upper-middle-class neighborhood and you'll see things
| that look ordinary but are expensive on closer
| inspection.
|
| Of course things have changed since then, but that's the
| gist.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| There's a reason it's called being "Anal Retentive"
| platz wrote:
| what's an example of something you made happen
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| encrypted backup of media files which should become public
| in very specific circumstances
| platz wrote:
| you made a funny
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| Take me on your helicopter, Jeffrey.
| whattheheckheck wrote:
| He was bragging about having a ti calculator in the 80s was
| seen as cool in that "interview" he filmed with Steve
| bannon
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Just curious what part of the world you live in? Apologies if
| that seems like prying
| stephbook wrote:
| Shouldn't a bad job market convince people to get a degree?
|
| You only miss a bad job market entry and low salaries, you need
| every meagre advantage you can get.
|
| 100% agree on a degree being a strong signal, by the way.
| danans wrote:
| > Shouldn't a bad job market convince people to get a degree?
|
| Maybe, but the degree has to be paid for, with time and
| money.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Not if the baseline assumption is that the value of a degree
| continues to go down and you could've climbed the ranks of
| plumbing instead of getting a white collar degree.
| somenameforme wrote:
| If we're speaking realistically and not idealistically, then
| the primary point of a degree is as an investment in a job
| market. You go deep in debt with the aim of getting many
| times what you invest in return. But in the case of a bad job
| market, you're investing serious money (especially in modern
| times) for what may not ultimately pay off. And even if LLMs
| don't reach their viable potential, they're still likely
| going to significantly depress wages/employment for many
| forms of knowledge work, making a degree even less valuable.
|
| I went to a top 10 university, but won't be encouraging my
| children to go to university at all, nor will I strongly
| discourage them. But I will make it clear that it is a choice
| with pros and cons, and in modern times I personally think
| that the cons outweigh the pros. Of course if they want to do
| some form of engineering then it will probably be necessary,
| but there's lots of wild careers like underwater welding that
| make big $$$, are fun/physical, highly skilled, and you get
| paid to learn instead of going 6 figures in debt before you
| even enter the job market. And it's something that will
| always be needed, everywhere, and isn't going anywhere.
|
| And the reality of life is, like the article says - where you
| start is not where you end. Once you get your foot in the
| door pretty much anywhere, your formal title often quickly
| becomes much less relevant than the skills you have.
| tzs wrote:
| Only around 1% or less of graduates from top schools (the
| Ivy League, MIT, Caltech, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, etc)
| end up with 6 figures of debt. In the Ivy League about 80%
| graduate with no debt. At top non-Ivy League schools
| average debt ranges from about $13k (MIT) to around $30k
| (CMU).
|
| Even when you expand to include all schools instead of just
| top schools, 6 figure debt is rare. Average is about $27k
| for public universities, $34k for private non-profit
| universities, and $40k for private for-profit schools.
|
| If someone has 6 figure debt from school they odds are
| overwhelming that it is from law school or medical school.
|
| I wonder how many excellent students from non-rich families
| who could easily get into a top school for low cost or even
| free don't even bother applying because they have heard
| that myth of widespread 6 figure debt?
| jongjong wrote:
| Yes 100%. I was born upper middle class. I have a BIT from a
| global top 50 University. I understood this after working in
| cryptocurrency sector in Germany.
|
| After I left Australia and moved to Europe, I realized after
| some time that 'the matrix' had demoted me into a lower social
| class. I had to work harder for less money and had access to
| fewer opportunities.
|
| Then I joined the crypto sector and the people there seemed
| almost mentally deranged. I didn't understand it at first. They
| had a way, way, way more cynical view of the world than I did.
| In retrospect, it feels like they had been under attack by the
| system, in secret... And they saw any outsider as an enemy. I
| felt like I was disliked for not being cynical enough. Like my
| subtle optimism was a signal that I didn't belong. It made me a
| target.
|
| Then I came back to Australia after having a really tough time
| and switched back to mainstream tech sector and it was like
| everyone I worked with was living in some fantasy world. Like
| 10x more naive than I ever was, all colleagues with master
| degrees and PhDs... Work was a lot easier too. More forgiving.
| Also, I was liked. People were almost too nice to me.
|
| The difference is privilege. I can see it very clearly now.
| It's absolutely not based on culture or race.
|
| Society is highly stratified and I believe there are mechanisms
| built into the system to prevent people from different classes
| to meet.
|
| I feel like there is some kind of operating system which
| manufactures cultures to create separations... Traditions and
| taboos separate people to prevent them from sharing their
| experiences and to maintain blind spots which serve to hold the
| system together. I think I understand why rich people don't
| like to hang around regular people.
|
| Have you ever wondered why people don't talk to strangers
| anymore? I went to a train museum recently and noticed that the
| carriages on old trains had seats facing each other; I sat on
| one side and thought to myself that it must have been awkward
| for people to stare at each other in the face, sitting so close
| to each other, with nothing and nobody standing in between
| them... for such long trips. Carriages were split between
| 'smoking' and 'non-smoking'... Nowadays carriages are split
| between 'normal' and 'quiet'... And the number of quiet
| carriages seems to have increased over time... It's like there
| are forces in society which try to prevent people with
| different experiences from sharing their experiences. This is
| masked by superficial differences; superficial mental and
| physical differences are fine but experiential differences are
| not.
|
| When I watch modern movies, they seem to show characters from
| an elite perspective. Even characters who are depicted as poor
| seem to share elite ideologies which makes the characters not
| believable.
|
| Also, beyond values, there are some material distortions; I've
| seen too many detective series were the cop is living in a
| luxury penthouse.
| mawadev wrote:
| I think you should spend less time on computers, the internet
| and around tech people, it will blow your mind
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| DACH societies are extremely class based, in fact most of
| European royal families come from there. They take it as a
| point of honor to be rude or at least gruff in daily
| interactions, it's not about you. Their cynicism is indeed a
| poison, no need for it as the real life will bring enough
| unexpected challenges.
| dgellow wrote:
| European royal families have pretty much nothing to do with
| the modern DACH region, and compared to the UK royal
| families in continental Europe have very little influence.
|
| But the rest is pretty much true unfortunately, though I
| wouldn't call the behavior rude because it's not seen as
| rudeness by people who do it. It's more that being
| optimistic, feeling surprised by things, expressing strong
| emotions is all seen as naive and pointless. There is also
| a strong aversion to taking risks which is pretty
| frustrating. Even when you can show they are calculated
| risks.
|
| However not the whole DACH region is the same either, the
| cultures are pretty different, the only thing in common is
| really only the language. I had better success in Germany
| than my own country of Switzerland
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| > European royal families have pretty much nothing to do
| with the modern DACH region, and compared to the UK royal
| families in continental Europe have very little
| influence.
|
| Literally the top female figure in the EU structures had
| married into German nobility. Even without the marriage
| it's hard to describe the carrier as self-made. Families
| controlling German automotive industry are interleaved
| with aristocrats. The trees are obstructing you the view
| of the forest.
| jongjong wrote:
| Made me chuckle. I think I know what you mean about
| "expressing strong emotions" - This is how a lot of
| Europeans view Americans specifically.
|
| I think the Australian version of naivety is more about
| meritocratic ideas and flat social hierarchies.
| Australians aren't usually loud or opinionated. European
| CEOs may not like it if an employee reaches out to them
| directly. In Australia, the startup CEO usually tries to
| be friends with the employees so it feels natural to
| reach out to the CEO directly and they often reach out to
| you. In Europe, I get the sense that CEOs believe that
| they're too important to talk to employees. This has been
| my experience at startups of similar sizes.
| dgellow wrote:
| > In Europe, I get the sense that CEOs believe that
| they're too important to talk to employees
|
| In Switzerland and Germany that's pretty much true, yes.
| As a contractor I really prefer working with UK and US
| companies, the communication is as you describe, more
| friendly and natural, and they are generally more than
| happy to see someone who wants to take initiatives (in
| fact it is expected)
| ghaff wrote:
| It also depends on the company.
|
| I was picking up my buffet dinner at a company event in
| Europe and the CEO who I somewhat knew was alongside;
| this was a moderately large company--maybe 10K employees
| at that point. We went to sit down at a table and the
| $EUROPEAN_COUNTRY people there were basically "Nah, we'd
| prefer to speak our own language." So the CEO and I went
| down to sit at another more welcoming table. (And had a
| very pleasant discussion about his upcoming family
| vacation and forwarded him some info.)
|
| Not sure of the point but there are definitely cultural
| differednces on many dimensions on what you can do and
| can't do.
| mejutoco wrote:
| Battenberg -> mountbatten
|
| I think that is what op meant.
| mawadev wrote:
| I'm german and I was at aldi yesterday, one guy was super
| nice and happy and wished another a good day, and the guy,
| including us were surprised how nice he was and he said "we
| need more nice people in this country". Mind blowing.
| Taking the plane from croatia to germany is also funny,
| because there is a grey filter as soon as you enter the
| airspace
| svara wrote:
| While I can only peripherally relate to the specifics of your
| story, I think it beautifully illustrates how interesting and
| mind expanding it is to spend time in different cultural
| contexts, and that different cultures can very much co-exist
| in the same countries or even in the same people.
|
| Everyone should do it more, it really helps put the
| uncompromising convictions of people around you into
| perspective and see them as what they often are: a lack of
| understanding for the breadth of human experience.
| jongjong wrote:
| Yeah I suppose this is the stuff which you only start to
| understand after you've been somewhere more than a few
| years. It also makes you appreciate certain things about
| where you're from which you didn't even notice and used to
| take for granted. The European class system combined with a
| deep cynicism towards tech was a huge surprise to me...
| Especially for Germany which I thought would be an
| engineer's paradise.
|
| Australia is extremely egalitarian. I think even more so
| than the US. In both Australia and the US, you can usually
| talk to the CEO of the startup directly; they actually like
| to talk to their staff directly. But in the US, the power
| differential is usually much bigger, I am more cautious
| about what I say.
|
| In Germany, there seems to be a more rigid hierarchy and
| the founders tend to avoid talking to employees directly;
| they tend to communicate mostly through middle-managers,
| even in relatively small startups.
| taurath wrote:
| > mechanisms built into the system to prevent people from
| different classes to meet
|
| IME these mechanisms are a natural outflow of how those with
| money and power delegate power or invest money.
|
| I have friends with a private plane. I also have friends who
| are scrambling to make rent, among many other friends always
| worried about their next paycheck. When you put the two
| together, you'll find they can't really engage in
| conversation about their lives without extreme embarassment -
| the plane people could solve most of the immediate problems
| facing the paycheck folks with barely a dent in their
| lifestyle.
|
| So the plane people end up around people they can talk about
| vacation spots with, and the paycheck people hang around
| people who are empathetic and participate together in mutual
| aid to get thru. Rarely do the paycheck folks become plane
| people (they're too generous or focus on maximizing other
| aspects of their lives than income). Rarely do the plane
| people actually help the paycheck people, except indirectly.
|
| Inequality is embarrassing. Our society is embarrassing. That
| there is no safety net and basic needs being met being
| demanded by everyone from the poor to the richest of the rich
| can ONLY happen because they don't interact. I see a huge
| backlash coming and it will not hit equally, or fairly. No
| society can continue like this without breaking down.
| fullStackOasis wrote:
| > No society can continue like this without breaking down
|
| I wish you were right, but I think you are wrong. This
| article on poverty in ancient Rome suggests otherwise:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_ancient_Rome
| "Their society may have consisted of a handful of wealthy
| individuals that made up 0.6% of the population, an army
| that made up 0.4% of the population, and the poor masses
| that made up 99% of the populace." I selected Rome because
| it's my understanding that this is one of the longest lived
| empires.
|
| The facts for the Roman Empire are not clear, but it looks
| like massive inequality is the sad default mode for
| humanity. One might expect that as literacy and information
| sharing improved, it would be less tolerable by the
| populace for this inequality to persist. But it seems about
| as bad as ever. This may be due to the perception that rich
| people because they "earned" it, despite the fact that it
| seems patently obvious (to me at least!) that is not the
| case.
| jongjong wrote:
| You occupy a very unusual place seeing such extremes of
| both sides.
|
| I've only interacted with people with that level of wealth
| in a professional capacity. In my personal life, I know a
| lot of people who own multiple properties and businesses
| including some of my own family members but I don't think I
| know anyone with a private jet. The top of the range I know
| have big boats and big houses.
|
| I feel like there is a social boundary between the old
| money and the new money.
|
| The new money tends to be much wealthier and they don't
| like the old money folks. In theory, they could both talk
| with each other about exotic holiday spots, fine dining and
| boating/yachting but there is a different discomfort. And
| it's not about tech understanding because a lot of children
| of old money went into tech. I think the discomfort is that
| the new money folks see the old money folks as spoiled
| brats... But IMO, this is a result of the new money folks
| not seeing their own privilege; not granted by daddy, sure,
| but granted by the system itself.
|
| My view is that nobody earned anything. They were chosen by
| luck of birth, chosen by a rich friend, chosen by a rich
| investor, or chosen by algorithm or a combination thereof.
| Usually based on highly superficial aspects. Their efforts
| have very little to do with it besides providing plausible
| narrative cover.
| thr0w wrote:
| > Nowadays carriages are split between 'normal' and
| 'quiet'... And the number of quiet carriages seems to have
| increased over time... It's like there are forces in society
| which try to prevent people with different experiences from
| sharing their experiences.
|
| In the USA at least, people in the normal cars aren't
| "sharing their experiences". They're playing garbage music
| from their iPhone speakers (technically not allowed - happens
| anyway), trying to subdue their giggling/crying/screaming
| children, loudly conversing amongst themselves, etc. It's a
| zoo.
|
| Not trying to pick apart your post, I liked reading it in
| general.
| musicale wrote:
| 100%* prefer almost anything to sodcasting, facetime calls,
| and tiktok/youtube/mobile games at max volume
|
| *rounded up
| YZF wrote:
| It all used to be smoking and there are still places in the
| world where trains and busses have seats facing each other.
| Having sat in those seats in the past I can tell you that
| people can still perfectly well not talk to each other ;)
|
| There are cultures (e.g. go to Israel) where random people
| still talk to each other.
|
| I'm not sure I would call what you observed in Europe
| privilege. I think you were just an outsider/immigrant from a
| different culture. Different places have different cultures
| and it takes a long time (if ever) to acquire them. You'll be
| treated differently if you don't have the right social cues
| e.g.
|
| In places like the US or Canada this tends to be a lesser
| effect because it's a big melting point.
|
| I know plenty of really rich people (like billionaire or
| approaching) that aren't that different than most of us (also
| rich). You don't magically move to some other "circle" just
| by having money. It's true there are certain
| "classes"/cliques in different cultures but it's not as
| simple as has money vs. hasn't.
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| Re: movies and elite perspectives, I watched They Cloned
| Tyrone a while ago and it had a solid "hero movie from a
| lower socioeconomic class" vibe. I enjoyed the perspective
| shift and I think it might be a good example of your point.
| musicale wrote:
| > Then I joined the crypto sector and the people there seemed
| almost mentally deranged
|
| so better than expected then
| lisper wrote:
| > Nowadays carriages are split between 'normal' and
| 'quiet'... And the number of quiet carriages seems to have
| increased over time... It's like there are forces in society
| which try to prevent people with different experiences from
| sharing their experiences.
|
| It's no great mystery. Social interaction is a skill that
| requires practice and effort to develop. Interacting with new
| people is risky and occasionally painful. Back in the day the
| punishment for not developing that skill and taking those
| risks was boredom, but nowadays you can just crawl into your
| cell phone to while away the hours.
| zarzavat wrote:
| Most of the value of a CS degree is being able to say that you
| have a degree truthfully. If you don't have a degree then you
| just lie and say that you do, which is a moral papercut. Nobody
| really cares about your education though, they just want their
| world view to be maintained.
| toast0 wrote:
| All of my professional jobs have been contingent on
| background checks and validating (to some degree) the things
| I put in the record. If I say I have a degree, they call to
| verify. They called to verify work history, although not
| being able to reach previous employers wasn't a deal breaker.
| I don't think just claim you have a degree when you don't
| works.
|
| If you have a degree from a 'good school', that gets you some
| credibility by itself, but mostly a 4 year degree says 'this
| person can commit to doing difficult things without an
| immediate payoff for around 4 years' which is a valuable
| thing for employers.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| For those looking for one practical way to do this in the US, I
| can share my story.
|
| In the US I waited until I was 24 years old to transfer to a 4
| year university, because my parents were somewhat well off and
| utterly unwilling to help with my student loans when push came
| to shove - even though my financial aid was calculated based on
| _their_ income and assets. At 24, I was reclassified as an
| "independent student", and my financial aid was now calculated
| solely on my (nonexistent) assets. The dynamic entirely flipped
| and I got to go full time, and even live in a dorm and stuff.
|
| Between 18 and 24, then, one has roughly six years to get a 2
| year community college degree out of the way for relative
| pennies on the dollar. That's a lot of time! Federal loans can
| pay for all or nearly all of this, but CCs are generally cheap
| enough that even on minimum wage one can generally budget the
| ~$100-200 per month it takes to take one or two classes per
| semester. (I wouldn't actually recommend paying out of pocket
| if you can avoid it, because your quality of life suffers far
| more from a $200 extra per month when you are making minimum
| wage vs when you are making six figures, but to each their
| own.)
|
| If you fear you won't be able to transfer to a 4 year
| university for whatever reason, there are 2 year degrees which
| provide on-ramps to paid work; my original degree was going to
| be like that until I switched plans to the transfer approach.
|
| The time I spent in a 4 year university weren't entirely
| covered by grants of course, but it was many multiples cheaper
| than it would have been had I insisted on going right out the
| gate. I don't think I would have been approved for the six
| figures of loans I would have needed with that plan with such
| unwilling parents. I walked away with low figures total in
| debt, which is much more manageable, and has a much higher ROI
| than e.g. $30,000 of a house mortgage. I actually somehow ended
| up holding less student debt than most college degree holders I
| have met here in Finland, where tuition is free and loans are
| intended to pay for everything else (housing, etc).
| pipes wrote:
| Hi, can you elaborate, I don't think I understand what you
| mean.
| zipy124 wrote:
| This is completely correct. It's the same reason why an MBA or
| PhD can be valuable if you want to go the management track. In
| Europe specifically - especially in the UK - the class based
| system is still alive and kicking and is based on subtle tells
| such as education, name, accent and more. It's less overt than
| in say India, but still very much present.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| I really do think the class system holds us back as a society
| in Britain, George Orwell had a lot to say on this subject in
| _England your England_ and I fear the decline he describes in
| the 1940s only accelerated through the 20th century and into
| the 21st. That essay is a good read for anyone interested in
| the topic, although of course much has happened since it was
| written.
|
| I resented being constantly 'corrected' on the local accent I
| was picking up from school as a child, but now I appreciate
| that an RP or close to RP accent turns down the difficulty
| slider in certain British interactions.
| zipy124 wrote:
| It really does. The classic example I think of is Michael
| Caine discussing when he wanted to do housing renovations,
| and before he even submitted designs, he had neighbours and
| councillors complaining it was going to be "vulgar,"
| "nouveau," and "obscene" simply because of his class. He
| also talked about the concept of working class people
| furthering the divide, for example his female family
| members referring to women of the correct class as "proper
| ladies" and putting themselves down.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| I go back to the UK every so often for work. Being in EU
| countries is really weird, because they _don 't_ have
| 'class systems' (like the brits).
|
| Deference is given to your professional title, doctor,
| lawyer etc.
| varjag wrote:
| Every nation that was a heart of an empire still has
| lingering class issues. I've been told by Swedes a non-
| commoner last name can absolutely open some doors. Though
| nothing comes close to the UK, which is closer to Japan
| in this regard than the continental Europe.
| anonymars wrote:
| > Every nation that was a heart of an empire still has
| lingering class issues
|
| What nation on Earth doesn't have class issues?
| varjag wrote:
| Nations that didn't have their own feudal aristocracies.
| retired wrote:
| Belgium has a class system. Read up on the death of Sanda
| Dia, very light punishments since all suspects had well
| connected parents. Lawyers, judges, doctors, surgeons,
| business executives, entrepreneurs, bankers, corporate
| directors, politicians, senior civil servants, police
| officials.
| dmoy wrote:
| > I resented being constantly 'corrected' on the local
| accent I was picking up from school as a child, but now I
| appreciate that an RP or close to RP accent turns down the
| difficulty slider in certain British interactions.
|
| The accent bit happens in the US too, to an extent.
| Depending on the accent you grew up with, you get different
| responses from people in professional or professional-
| adjacent settings if you forget to switch the knob back to
| the more homogenized vaguely Iowa-sounding GenAm accent.
| This covers a gamut of other accents - regional or not (NE,
| aave, southern, val, etc).
|
| But it's not nearly as bad as RP in England from what I
| gather - for one, a pretty decent chunk of the population
| would normally grow up with a GenAm accent with no forcing,
| unlike in England where it's a pretty hyper local <5% of
| the native population.
| retired wrote:
| I did what is referred to as a "fun MSc" (pretmaster) in The
| Netherlands. It's a Master programme that doesn't require
| much effort and doesn't put you in too much debt but does
| allow you to put MSc behind your name. Some engineering firms
| (companies that do engineering as their core business)
| require all applicants to have an MSc. It is how I got my
| foot in the door.
| ghaff wrote:
| I have an ME (pretty much MSc). I'm not sure anyone in the
| US really cares about the degree and I'd never put it
| beside my name except on a formal resume. I wouldn't say no
| effort; it took a couple of years.
| Madmallard wrote:
| As someone who got a Comp Sci degree from a good school and who
| worked at FAANG right out of school, it seems like this is all
| that matters to companies looking to hire me.
| tayo42 wrote:
| You still need to leet code and memorize the system design
| script lol
| YZF wrote:
| I got a job first and my degree later.
|
| At work nobody knows what degree you've got. I mean some people
| insist to be called Dr. X if they have a Ph.D. (and in some
| cultures that's more common). You can have a B.Sc. in biology,
| or an M.Sc. in EE, or a law degree or no degree and nobody
| knows. As a manager in a large tech company I didn't even know
| that for the people I managed. I would usually find out
| people's background through random talk but it's not
| information I had access to. I was surprised to find one of the
| rising stars didn't finish his degree and wanted to take some
| time off to finish it.
|
| Where it does matter is in the hiring process and especially
| for juniors and larger companies.
|
| > I've never seen a time when tech is less about engineering
| than right now.
|
| Sad but my experience as well.
|
| As someone who started being more self-educated (I did learn a
| lot of theory myself) and only later finished my degree
| (started, dropped out to do some real work, came back much
| later) I do think a good CS program teaches a lot of important
| things. Most importantly the ability to learn and understand
| research in this area. Not all the specific things you're going
| to learn are going to be applicable all the time, some will
| some of the time, and not having that background at all is
| limiting. You _can_ learn this without going through the
| academic system but it 's much harder and most people don't and
| stay stuck in some sense.
| EsotericSoft wrote:
| Opposite of my experience. I never cared about social
| networking. I focused only on being good.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Yeah being good is great but... some of the best engineers I
| have ever met are working at small companies making 150k,
| while mediocre ones fell into Meta/Google/Tesla jobs during
| the pandemic hiring frenzy and are now looking at retirement.
|
| If the goal is to be good that is fine, but there is little
| correlation with salary.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Similar story where as soon as someone made a 100k+ offer to me
| I dropped out of school and never looked back (was making
| $12/hr at the time).
|
| In retrospect it was not the best choice because college does
| give you a unique chance to get connections that let you into
| "the club" and will send you to the upper echelons of FAANG and
| early retirement.
|
| I always thought I would just become a better and better
| engineer cutting my teeth at startups and then make the switch,
| but now it almost feels like you are a career startup engineer
| or a career big tech engineer, and making the switch is
| difficult. One is obviously insanely more lucrative, probably
| 3-5X with the way equity has exploded.
| burnte wrote:
| > Similar story where as soon as someone made a 100k+ offer
| to me I dropped out of school and never looked back (was
| making $12/hr at the time).
|
| In the very early 90s, at 15 my part time computer repair job
| was paying a large share of the family rent, and by 17 I had
| graduated early and was working full time making 60k/yr. I
| had scholarships but I didn't take them because by 18 I had a
| customer base and a reputation. I went back to school in my
| 30s but it wasn't worth it. School is very help for many
| people and paths, but not all people and all paths.
| westoque wrote:
| There's a formula I've bookmarked from someone to help you get
| better social capital. In order to increase your surface for
| social capital you need to expand your influence, therefore you
| need to increase your luck:
|
| L (luck) = D (doing) x T (telling)
|
| Basically, you need to be able to show you are able to do stuff
| (D) and with enough people seeing this by you sharing (T)
| through different channels, can open doors. I haven't been
| doing it as heavily but it has already given me incredible
| opportunities.
| taurath wrote:
| Best way to have social capital is an introduction into a
| space where money and power exist. Many spaces no matter what
| you do you will never be able to get in without an intro, and
| they have extremely few opportunities. Being college buddies
| with a member of an upper class is one of the only times they
| will ever socially mix. It is indeed like royalty in every
| way.
|
| Being at Harvard gets you a lot relative to the population,
| being around the right clubs at Harvard gives you a lot
| relative to that. There is meritocracy within the range but
| nepotism can easily put people in the room. Work at a startup
| or two run by families of billionaires, and watch their
| career trajectory, and you will not have any doubt.
| amelius wrote:
| But what do you do if you can't stand the faintest smell of
| nepotism?
| girvo wrote:
| Struggle harder than you otherwise would, sadly.
| coldtea wrote:
| Then you're fucked :)
| reinitctxoffset wrote:
| The sibling commenters are correct but I will add with
| the benefit of being an old guy that this ebbs and flows.
| GP said "I have never seen tech be less about
| engineering", and I agree.
|
| But it can't get much _less_ about engineering before
| rich people become poor in large numbers, and that will
| start the pendulum back the other way.
|
| Rich people losing money that matters in large numbers is
| like a soft civil war, everything changes.
| maxk42 wrote:
| My experience has been quite the opposite. I have done far
| better than my peers and have less debt. I wonder which country
| you're in?
| jimvdv wrote:
| I guess it depends on what you want out of life too. I did not
| go to Uni, started my career early and had a very comfortable
| income my entire 20's. No debt, travelled all over the world,
| relaxed freelance contracts. I had a lot of free time and low
| stress.
|
| Later I joined one of my freelance clients as a co-founder
| (early 30s), more risky than the FAANG path but we're on the
| right path to a comfortable pension.
|
| I wouldn't trade my life for that of some of my FAANG friends.
| bottle_roket wrote:
| This tracks for me because I am a developer with a 4 year
| degree in a field completely unrelated to CS and I have never
| felt any of the stigma or othering from my coworkers on the
| measures you described.
| alephnerd wrote:
| People can kvetch but the advice in the article is correct. The
| alternative of no degree is _extremely_ difficult to succeed with
| unless you have a pre-existing network. And underemployment rates
| continue to remain lower for CS /CE/EE grads than other majors.
|
| Additionally, getting into the best school possible is critical.
| The top 20 CS, CE, EE, ECE, and EECS undergrad programs in the US
| graduate around 15-20k students a years. That is a large enough
| pool to recruit from for NCGs. For diversity reasons, employers
| will often also recruit from Veteran programs and some respected
| regional colleges (eg. SJSU, CalPoly, or SCU in the Bay or UTD,
| UTA, or UTSA in Austin) and then call it a day, so _where you go_
| truly does matter.
| rippeltippel wrote:
| I agree with the "what" but not with the "how".
|
| The article essentially says that, for a junior to be hired, they
| should demonstrate the same experience as a senior: deploy real
| system that solve real problems, know how systems behave in
| production, etc. That is precisely the skillset that someone
| builds up in a professional environment, i.e. after being hired.
|
| In my view and experience (20+ years in the field) the value of
| junior colleagues is not in what they already know how to do, but
| in the freshness of their ideas, and the ability to learn the
| skills required to bring those ideas to fruition.
|
| So, I agree that the hiring pipeline is broken, but for a
| different reason: companies stopped looking at juniors as a long-
| term investment.
|
| I can think of a few reasons for that. In any case, that mindset
| is to blame, not the "kids" and their education.
| Transfinity wrote:
| I think interest rates have a lot to do with that mindset. If
| you view a Jr engineer as a long term investment (in 18 months
| you get an SDE 2 who knows your business), that's much easier
| to justify when borrowing money is close to free.
| rienbdj wrote:
| Tragedy of the commons. What stops a company taking on the
| strong junior engineers you just invested time and resources
| into?
| rjbwork wrote:
| Not a lot, so you should make sure you give them generous
| raises and other incentives to stay.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Get any kind of degree. A research degree is better. Not because
| people will ask you for your degree but because the effort of
| getting one teaches you how to learn new stuff. Especially a Ph
| D. degree. A few years into your career, you will have learned
| most of what you know on the job.
|
| I know plenty of programmers with degrees other than computer
| science. Geologists, biochemists, theoretical physicists, etc.
| Most hard sciences involve some degree of programming at this
| point (usually Python). And with AI, system thinking is becoming
| much more relevant than deep algorithmic knowledge or math
| skills. Nice if you can do that stuff manually but not that
| essential anymore.
| genxy wrote:
| A _difficult_ degree in philosophy or english lit also does the
| same thing. Humans are amazing generalists, and when we
| practice thinking deeply, that skill transfers and allows us to
| pickup new domains.
| fasterik wrote:
| Philosophy is excellent training in the analytical skills
| needed for any knowledge-based job. Critically evaluating
| information, constructing arguments, thinking of counter-
| examples, etc.
| camdenreslink wrote:
| Getting a PhD is almost never worth the foregone wages if your
| goal is to be in private industry. For sure, people should get
| one if they are interested in research, or specific jobs that
| are only available to people with PhDs. But otherwise it isn't
| something to get into half-hearted.
| asdff wrote:
| This is only true when you compare the PhD field degree to
| something like finance where you can make real money at 23
| years old. If the alternative is a bs for a path where most
| people end up going PhD, you will be working for like $20/hr
| most your life. You will probably be breaking even with what
| the PhD stipend would have been anyhow and you aren't getting
| any healthcare benefits.
| vanuatu wrote:
| Im quite bullish on CS degrees, they equip you with a network and
| the general "vibe" of being in a common environment with other
| smart passionate kids that push you to challenge yourself
|
| also right now nothing is higher signal than a new grad who built
| a product with actual paying users
| LtWorf wrote:
| > who built a product with actual paying users
|
| How could this possibly signal competence? I think it just
| signals capital and free time.
| keiferski wrote:
| There is a weird assumption nowadays that "making money =
| you're an expert and know what you're doing." The best X is
| the one that makes the most cash, full stop.
|
| Very scary for the future, unfortunately.
| vanuatu wrote:
| hmm i dont think any new grad is an expert and knows what
| they're doing (if im understanding you right)
|
| but the skills we used to look for in new grads are
| shifting as coding agents make execution easy, a new grad
| with good business sense is really valuable
| LtWorf wrote:
| All I ask is they are willing to learn to use git
| decently.
| vanuatu wrote:
| what do you mean? we're hiring new grads because we think
| they will make the company money. most of our hires are from
| top schools so they're already proven to be smart
|
| right now most resumes are zero signal because any new grad
| can whip up an impressive sounding project using ai with zero
| paying users. but knowing what to build, having good product
| sense and taste, talking to customers, iterating and not
| giving up are much more desirable skills
|
| youd be surprised how many new grads with capital and free
| time have zero business skills
| hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm wrote:
| Ironic. I did both a humanities and a CS degree. The CS degree
| was filled with either south asian internationals or people who
| just want to make money. The rest were antisocial dudes.
| Humanities however was filled with young social women. The
| experiences I got from the latter was a huge ego and confidence
| boost.
| vanuatu wrote:
| highly dependant on school ofc
|
| i went to a top cs school and loved it, it raised the ceiling
| of what i thought was even possible, coming from a country
| where cs was not seen as an interesting or desirable job at
| the time
| KolibriFly wrote:
| A degree was never supposed to make someone instantly productive
| on day one. It was supposed to be paired with junior roles,
| mentoring, code review
| aatd86 wrote:
| Computer Science is still useful. It is software development that
| is made trivial now that software can write software.
| rienbdj wrote:
| Not many people are employed as computer scientists (they are
| mostly academics) compared to SWEs.
| aatd86 wrote:
| I was making the difference between engineering and
| development too actually. Building react and using react
| being an illustration of the difference between an engineer
| and a dev. It is a spectrum however, that's true.
| jdw64 wrote:
| Learning can be done without a degree, but building connections
| and securing funding is difficult without one.
|
| A degree simplifies the cognitive resources needed to gain trust.
| Normally, gaining trust requires a lot of time. As a freelancer,
| it took me two years of very low-income work and repeatedly
| taking small jobs before I got my first real contract, simply
| because I didn't have a good degree.
|
| But if you have a degree, you can skip that starting line
| quickly. I've done over 400 small jobs--work for college
| students, professors, and business owners. 80% of those were won
| with the lowest bid. And because I took those low-bid jobs, I
| eventually landed fairly well-paying contracts (about 35 of them)
| where I even drafted the contracts myself.
|
| Moreover, while they say you can learn without a degree, it's
| much harder.
|
| Why? Because a degree provides guidance through a curriculum.
| When you're just starting out, you don't even know what you need
| to learn. You have to ask around and figure it out piece by
| piece. A degree, even if you don't study properly, at least gives
| you the keywords to search for. Without a degree, you don't even
| know what it is you're trying to do.
|
| I don't have a computer science degree, nor did I attend a good
| university. That's why it took an enormous amount of time to
| generate income from computer-related work. And even then, the
| vast majority of jobs paid below minimum wage, if anything at
| all.
| 01284a7e wrote:
| Becoming a professional software engineer without a Comp Sci
| (or overlapping engineering degree) was a bad idea for the
| reasons you mention.
|
| I made it 15 years on mostly willpower earning millions of
| dollars, but never worked for a FAANG in any capacity, was
| unemployed (and even homeless) for different stints starting
| out, and to this day still get asked why I don't have a CS or
| engineering degree.
|
| And a Haiku-powered Claude Code could now probably one-shot
| most of the stuff I have ever banged my head on as hard as I
| could to figure out.
|
| I am just reflecting on the past though. What will make you
| "successful" then won't be what makes you that now.
| jdw64 wrote:
| I respect you. To be honest, I still haven't found my
| footing. Most of what I earned was squandered paying off
| debts from being scammed, and my work is irregular. And as
| you said, the game is always changing, the rules keep
| shifting. I feel anxious, but reading the words of a senior
| like you makes me feel better.
|
| I lived in a 3 pyeong (about 100 sq ft) space for three years
| (I wasn't homeless, so I had it better than you). Still, I'm
| grateful that now I have a small 8 pyeong (about 260 sq ft)
| space. Thank you for sharing your experiences and emotions.
|
| I want to succeed through willpower, just like you. As you
| know, most of my coding is done better by AI. Unless it's
| large scale programming, the work that comes to people like
| us is usually small scale, handled at the level of specific
| frameworks.
|
| Nevertheless, I still believe there is a place for me
| somewhere (though that might be self hypnosis).
|
| Thanks for the comment
| karakoram wrote:
| Related: Do You Really Want That Computer-Science Degree?
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48418782
| 0xpgm wrote:
| Hypothetically if LLMs were possible in the early 90s, what would
| the software ecosystem look like today?
|
| Would it be 80s technology everywhere but widely deployed? Or
| would things have advanced further - better compilers, more
| ergonomic languages, better platforms etc? I don't know. But I
| suspect we'd still have needed people studying computer science
| to advance the state of the art.
|
| Now looking forward 30-40 years from now, will everything still
| run on 2020s technologies?
| lucianbr wrote:
| > better compilers, more ergonomic languages
|
| If anything it seems wide deployment of LLMs would go against
| this. When nobody writes code by hand anymore, who will care
| about the ergonomics of programming languages? And even if a
| few do care, how would you get adoption? I expect everyone will
| just use whatever is already used most.
| __float wrote:
| Do you not review the code that LLMs output?
|
| It seems that now more than ever, testing is important. But
| LLMs love to cheat the tests and make them superficially
| pass. If you're never reading the code, how do you know
| changes are reasonable?
| lucianbr wrote:
| I do review, if only whatever I do was the norm for
| everyone :)
|
| Do you see lots of posts about new compilers and languages
| and language features on HN in the last year? Maybe I just
| missed them. I'd love to read more posts like that and
| fewer about agent frameworks.
| strangegecko wrote:
| Product does what it should and doesn't what it shouldn't?
| camdenreslink wrote:
| I agree, it seems like the current most popular languages and
| frameworks will become ossified, because they have the
| highest amount of training data. It's hard to see a future
| where Python and JavaScript aren't the most popular languages
| to use (assuming LLM-assisted development is the norm moving
| forward).
| omcnoe wrote:
| LLMs can be pretty conmpetent at languages that have zero
| training data, at least to the extent that those languages
| use features/ideas that are familiar. I wrote a toy
| language/compiler and AI can write code for it competently.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| Saying X is dead, it is still possible with the one right
| approach, suggests to me that X is effectively dead as far as the
| mainstream is concerned.
|
| Blacksmithing as a profession isn't dead either, it is still
| possible with the right approach. Just don't expect knights to
| come knocking asking you to make them the next Excalibur.
| bArray wrote:
| This article tackles the issue from a job opportunity
| perspective, but a bigger problem is the quality of students
| completing CS degrees is declining. UC Berkley are seeing it in
| their STEM departments [1] and I have seen the raw data for other
| Universities delivering CS degrees that is unpublished.
|
| Currently the only method to stop students from cheating is to
| run strictly controlled paper-based exams, and with smart glasses
| with built in LLMs, this is becoming more and more problematic.
| Anything not run under strict conditions is entirely
| untrustworthy.
|
| Management is slow to catch-up or react and the lecturers running
| these degree courses are under significant pressure to increase
| the results. I'm aware that many are doing class-wide weighted
| adjustments just to keep the numbers of passing students up. The
| quality of students graduating with CS degrees is declining
| rapidly.
|
| [1] https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/academics/failing-
| grade...
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Good good and good.
|
| Less competition for me, and "educators" are being punished
| HARD for their abrogation of their actual responsibilities,
| which was to teach and give exams.
|
| All exams should be verbal. The fact that verbal exams are so
| rare is because teachers/professors are overworked and (outside
| of AI) underpaid. Too many students, not enough time.
|
| The moment you pull up a powerpoint and start reading off of
| it, or start assigning homework, you've already failed to
| implement the traditional liberal arts education that the
| humanities seems to fawn over so much.
|
| There's ACTUALLY no solution to blooms two sigma problem
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem)
| except for teachers to fundamentally change their
| responsibilities. More time needs to be spent being intention
| to every individual student. If that means we need fewer
| students in universities, so be it. AI will kill the
| impenitence for higher education anyway.
| bArray wrote:
| > Less competition for me, and "educators" are being punished
| HARD for their abrogation of their actual responsibilities,
| which was to teach and give exams.
|
| Universities consist of a wide range of people with different
| incentives, the lecturers typically (in my experience) have
| very pure motives. It's the management parts that put
| pressure to pass students, meet metrics, etc.
|
| > The moment you pull up a powerpoint and start reading off
| of it, or start assigning homework, you've already failed to
| implement the traditional liberal arts education that the
| humanities seems to fawn over so much.
|
| Homework is essentially dead post-LLMs. The lecturer's
| responsibility is to provide guided learning, but also most
| importantly to assess each student's attempt to learn.
|
| > There's ACTUALLY no solution to blooms two sigma problem
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem)
| except for teachers to fundamentally change their
| responsibilities. More time needs to be spent being intention
| to every individual student. If that means we need fewer
| students in universities, so be it. AI will kill the
| impenitence for higher education anyway.
|
| You'd be surprised how much 1:1 with students there are. One
| example I'm aware of is CS students getting 4 hours 1:1 for
| one module per semester - that's a hell of a lot.
|
| What you're ultimately up against is cost per student. The
| overheads in Universities are enormous. It's usually 40:60:+,
| so PS40k pay, PS60k overhead plus research and investment
| (conference paper, travel, journals, new tools, etc).
| camdenreslink wrote:
| > many are doing class-wide weighted adjustments
|
| Isn't this just grading on a curve, which has been done
| probably as long as universities have existed? The key is the
| instructor making sure a high standard is met (which seems to
| be the crux of the issue).
| bArray wrote:
| Yes it has been in practice for a long time, but it's now
| being used to push clear fail cases into passing grades just
| to meet quotas. Prior it was used to adjust for particularly
| difficult assessments, and was closely monitored.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > a bigger problem is the quality of students completing CS
| degrees is declining. UC Berkley are seeing it in their STEM
| departments
|
| The decline in quality of STEM students/graduates is alarming,
| but the decline in _intellectual quality_ of students is
| generalised.
|
| Little did Dodson think he was being prophetic when he wrote
| satirically of Reeling, Writhing, and the arithmetical
| operations of Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and
| Derision.
|
| [0] _ Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
| matteohorvath wrote:
| First step is denial
| analog31 wrote:
| This is reminiscent of my field, physics. As I was finishing my
| degree in the early 90s, I joined the American Physical Society,
| and received their magazine, _Physics Today_. Every month there
| was an article along the same lines: The physics degree isn 't
| dead.
| delis-thumbs-7e wrote:
| Why would anyona think Physics degree would be "dead"?
| ironman1478 wrote:
| It's always been difficult for new grads to get jobs. Most new
| grads are a net negative for the first year or two because
| they're just not good at much and probably don't have the domain
| experience for their role. This was true 10 years and and it's
| probably worse now as the field has been flooded with people who
| don't actually enjoy doing CS and are doing it for money.
|
| Companies will still hire new grads, but are being much more
| careful because the quality of new grads is just so low now. Even
| "experienced" engineers are having a hard time getting hired
| because they're honestly not that good but got in when the market
| just needed bodies. I think hiring is broken for people with more
| experience due to this.
|
| I do feel bad that people went down a route believing there will
| be a career down the road for them. I do believe what would help
| is some sort of licensing. It would add an extra barrier, but
| there really needs to be a gate to prove some sort of competence
| because there are now way too many people in the industry who
| just aren't that good tbh. It's ruining the whole thing for
| people who do have drive and passion that now can't get in the
| door due to the skittishness of companies.
| fasterik wrote:
| Our culture has too much focus on landing a job and not enough
| focus on becoming the kind of person who can adapt and thrive in
| any situation.
|
| Computer science isn't for everyone, and probably the people
| going into it for the money should look elsewhere. You should
| study computer science if you find it intrinsically interesting.
| If you fall into that category, it will teach you how to think
| about problems rigorously, how to find solutions and break them
| down into steps that can be stated unambiguously, and how to
| reason about the performance and real-world tradeoffs of complex
| systems. Those are skills that will never be outdated, even if
| programming becomes fully automated.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| If a job is well-paying, there will always be many people going
| into it for the money. High paying and only people who love it
| do it are pretty much incompatible.
| teucris wrote:
| There are two things you can get from a degree: 1. Knowledge and
| skills 2. A network and a reputation
|
| While I don't agree with "it's not what you know, it's who you
| know" - both are critical and just having one without the other
| isn't going to set you up for success - I think we don't do
| enough to tell young people about item 2.
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| Call me biased, but the CS degree always seemed like the "general
| studies" of computing fields.
|
| The interesting areas involve some sort of domain expertise-
| medical, physics, civil, electrical, chemical engineering, etc.
| or even pure math in the case of data science.
|
| CS lacks all of those, including a strong math background.
|
| Sure, for plain "boring" software development, CS is perfectly
| fine.
|
| But in terms of one's personal education and career trajectory,
| why not aim higher?
| kmbfjr wrote:
| Algorithm analysis and numerical analysis are nothing BUT math.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Who said it was? It's in fact more important than ever to know
| how to read and know how coding architecture works
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