861
Computer Science, a popular college major, has one of the highest unemployment rates (www.newsweek.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
253 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Published earlier this year, but still relevant.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 86 points 1 year ago (32 children)

I graduated with a degree in Computer Science and Software Engineering from the University of Washington in 2020, during the height of Covid.

After over 3000 handcrafted applications (and many more AI-written ones), I have never been offered a job in the field.

I know of multiple CS graduates who have killed themselves, and so many who are living with their parents and working service/retail.

I think the software engineering rush of the early 2000s will be looked back upon like the San Francisco gold rush in 1949.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 32 child comments
    •
  • [–] [S] 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    I was in a similar boat. Graduated right around the housing crash. If my wife didnt work at the time, we would have been in a terrible spot. It look a good 6 months to get my first job. After that, I haven't had any issues popping into jobs.

    Sounds like you got a raw deal. Our industry has many highs and lows when it comes to jobs and work available.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (19 children)

    3000? That’s hyperbole right?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 19 child comments
    •
  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    No I have a spreadsheet with 3200 lines of submitted applications, which includes both entry level positions and internships. Many with customized cover letters.

    When you do the math its not even a strong pace, only about 3/day over 3 years. On a good day I was submitting 12-15.

    I even applied to some famous ones, like the time Microsoft opened up 30 entry level positions and received 100,000 applications in 24 hours. It is rumored thet they realized they cannot process 100k apps, so they threw them all away and hired internally.

    Whether they actually threw them out or not, that one always sticks with me. Submitting 100k apps is literally a lifetime of human work. All of that wasted effort is a form of social murder in my opinion.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    LMAO I THOUGHT YOU MEANT CODE APPLICATIONS. Like you developed 3000 apps. I was like no way...

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [+] -6 points 1 year ago (13 children)

    It sounds like the same amount of effort that it would take to make a really good open source project, or contribute to an existing one.

    I find it hard to believe you wouldn't get a job with something like that under your belt. Also 3000 applications is probably a bit shotgun rather than targeted and HR would be able to pick up on it

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 13 child comments
    •
  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    You're right that my time was wasted, and knowing the outcome, I wish I could go back and do more project work before trying to enter the job market.

    But I don't think that is a financial possibility for most Americans. Going to school drained my savings, when I graduated I had almost nothing except for school debt, medical debt, and high rent. Saying "I'm gonna take off and work for free for a year" never really seemed like a possibility.

    And as for my apps, the 3000 were not shotgun, they were all personalized, custom cover letters, keywords, etc. It only averaged out to 3/day. I did not track the apps where I used AI to submit them- the AI ones were definitely shotgun.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    It's not your fault, but it sounds like you and probably a lot of other people were misled about what having a degree actually does.

    The most important thing someone looks at when you apply for a job is that you are interested in the thing and capable of doing it. The degree doesn't really do that but the personal projects do. The degree might be a nice to have on top and helps to convince some people, but you always end up working with people without one anyway.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I'm not sure I was misled, what you said was explicitly taught to us at University. I think my degree is the #1 thing on my resume, but of course I also had projects, a few certificates, and multiple attempts at more specific fields.

    Back when I was applying, my GitHub activity was pretty solid green.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It's weird because everywhere I've ever worked routinely hires people who don't even know how to make a commit, or anything at all really.

    For some reason even those people are somehow jumping ahead of competent people like you in the queue. It's also annoying for us because we have to deal with the bad ones that HR delivers.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago*

    Oh god someone that actually knows how to create an issue, do a PR, submit PR, them merge all in that order is a smaller amount of people then we care to admit. I've had to teach many many people over the years with coding experience how to use git... Or github like interface. Change management is hard when devs don't know how to work in s team setting.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Well believe it gramps, most of the open source projects contributors now either just do content creation as a side hustle or are permanently looking for work, at least in my experience

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    "most" open source project contributors are looking for work? Lol ok bud

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    IDK about most. But, I've seen many OS contributors say they're looking for work. Seen one recently saying he won't be contributing much to the project anymore because he's housing-insecure. Seen maintainers for popular projects get laid off and are now looking for work. Seen people with 10+ and 20+ years of experience not being able to find a job after many months.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    Yeah there are obviously unfortunate cases. But to put another unsourced number out there I would say 90% of open source maintainers are employed in some way or even directly to work on that thing.

    The point of bringing it up is that those people would gladly give a pass on an interview to someone they already know contributes than some random graduate they don't know.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Yeah. Broken economy, broken world, etc etc. it's like a bad dream that won't end. IRL is the doomscroll now.

    I don't blame you, just be thankful you're so out of touch you find it hard to believe.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Well to see it from the perspective from the inside: we always have hundreds of openings, and I've seen openings for months and years without suitable candidates. Sometimes lots of bad applicants and sometimes no applicants at all.

    That's for the niche openings. For regular graduate stuff new people start every single day.

    It's hard to match up that with the fact that some people apparently aren't getting a single application progressed.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    the 2020-23 isnt exactly a time they were hiring at all, they froze for like 2 years. and students were barely learning at all since the classes were all online, and there was no way to find volunteering work. if you go back to look at your university reviews on yelp(yea they have it for universities) its pretty dismal out there.

    he said he handcrafted alot of them, so it was pretty targeted.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    2020s was probably the worst time to graduate or even attend a 4-year university. they were starting to lock down, and they were laying people off and hiring freezing everywhere, that dint stop till maybe mid 2022, the effect was pretty devasting, i was still working a chain store and many people from IT to electrical engineer just got freshly laid off. and then the '23 massive tech layoffs began too i dont see this going to reverse for CS majors anythime soon, since CS has been having issues like since early 2010s of getting hired.

    on students who were attending universities for the first time, or halfway through thier degree in the 2020s, i looked at reviews of my universities, most of them said they dint learn anything at all, so it puts them at disadvantage already, especially if its all only ONLINE courses. if you been in a regular course where the professors only uses powerpoint , you arnt learning anything a professor did this with BIOchem(for life science students, which is allegedly easier than the other biochem for scientists) and then when exam times came, they were almost as tough as my CC chem classes.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    There was even a class action suit against UW for their negligence during covid. I guess the case is already settled, so I'm looking forward to my meager restitution check.

    And I actually feel lucky that most of my serious classes were complete before Covid lockdown, bc the quality of education during covid was absolutely pathetic.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    my school the same, it was a state uni, communter school and everyone said it was terrible(based on the reviews, and personally prior the pandemic too. there was one that stuck with me, a woman said she transferred to another university ucla because she dint find herself getting any opportunities at the school, or furthering her career track and she saw her fellow classmate struggle to get a career after they graduated.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    A degree in CS is valueless for actual working jobs. You need to write software and show that you know what you're doing. And if you can do that, you may not even need a job from anyone else. The time when companies would just overstaff and have paid interns is long over.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    What CS subfield? I think it really depends if you were able to specialize somewhat. At least systems programming and lower level coding seems to be somewhat in demand once you get into the field. Even given the current economy we aren't really getting much interest from students.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Over the years I have tried a handful of subfields.

    I always felt particularly adept at assembly language programming, so I had a couple projects doing that, and applied to every relevent job I could find.

    As a math nerd I enjoyed data science and machine learning, I had quite a few projects like a neutral network from scratch in Matlab, and many data analysis and computer vision projects in R. I was always aware this field is very competitive and my chances were low here.

    I had a friend get a job in the biomedical field, so I tried to follow that, I have Python projects doing basic gene sequencing and analysis, even a really cool project that replicated evolution.

    Another friend landed a government job, so I followed his advice and got some security certs.

    I also had smaller projects and attempts at databases, finance programming, and video games.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent