I graduated in 2006. When I was in school the idea was that there wouldn’t be any programmers left in the USA because it would all be offshore. But by the time I graduated it was fairly easy to find work. There was a slowdown in 2008 but tech did better than most other fields. This is where the idea comes from that tech will come back, I think. Tech is cyclical but it’s not on the same cycle as other business, or hasn’t been.
The whole AI thing is fake. What’s really going on is another massive offshoring attempt. Everyone I know who’s lost a job lost it to offshoring not AI. This is basically 2001 all over again. So the idea is that offshoring will not work out again and the jobs will come back. Is it true or is this time different? I’m not entirely sure.
I work at a large company that is not considered one of the tech bros. I doubt we’re hiring graduates ever again.
For the record, we’re NOT all in on AI - far from it - but what we have found is that 98% of graduate hires aren’t productive and over-estimate their skills.
Maybe it’s different elsewhere in the world, but in and around Toronto, we’ve found that most CS grads have gone into the field because they think it will pay well. Most have no “adjacent” skills, such as VCS understanding, PRs, how work is broken down etc, but the biggest red flag though is just how few of them are interested in expanding their horizons. I currently have one junior right now working on an Android app and he seems incapable of moving past the MVP, java based patterns they learned in college.
The way I see it, Colleges are doing a very poor job right now, and the students are paying the price.
software should be a trade, and treated like apprenticeships… some theory is needed, but it’s wild that anyone thinks 3 years of just theory is going to produce decent software engineers
3 years of just theory is going to produce decent software engineers
Eh… isn’t everybody encouraged to do projects? Like isn’t every single class doing that? If so then it’s not just theory, it’s actual practice.
Also universities and engineering schools to suggest (some make it mandatory) to have internships. That’s also practice.
I think only CS graduates who plan to become professors are perfectly fine with “just” theory but everybody else has actual opportunities to go being that.
i wouldn’t say projects are practise… they’re kinda like a really basic simulator… you’re solving contrived problems so they’re not messy, you don’t have seniors etc, there’s no existing code base, no complex deployments, you’re not doing most of the non-technical parts of software engineering, and the list goes on and on and on
internships are great, but they’re really short
In France at least internships are nearly 6 months long. It’s nowhere near as long as a normal project length but still, it’s quite a bit.
On the project aspect, it doesn’t have to be done this way. Contributing to existing project is totally feasible. One could contribute a plugin to PeerTube, a patch to the Linux kernel, etc. Sure one can start from scratch, and maybe in some cases it’s better (maybe less fear) but I think it’s rare to be an actual requirement from teachers.
software is not a one and done, and foss is so far from a workplace. there’s a huge amount of software engineering that’s not writing code, and maintaining a code base over years is far different than a relatively isolated fire and forget
an internship wouldn’t cut it, and neither would foss contributions
I personally would rather hire one of my gaming buddies than most people with stellar resumes, simply because they have a fantastic learning capability and comfort with tech.
I forgot to add a comment about this yesterday:
There was a change in USA tax code that lead to many layoffs in the United States. Companies could no longer write off programmer’s salaries and benefits if they were doing pure research. It went from a yearly deduction on corporate tax to something very delayed. Making it effectively gone.
The tax code had been allowed for generations, then suddenly the companies had to actually pay the programmers instead of the federal government reimbursing them
I think it underscores how little each of us understands this very complex society, even when it’s being wrecked
