Published earlier this year, but still relevant.

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[–] 63 points 1 year ago (15 children)

As a Computer science graduate, I have to say:

No shit! The industry is terrible and has no standards (I don't mean level of quality but there is no agreed accreditation or methodology). If you do end up in a job you will most likely not use even 5% of what whatever school you went to taught you. You will likely work for peanuts as there will always be someone to do it cheaper (not always right, or good, or even usable). You will work with people doing your job that just lied about having any post secondary education. There is almost no ability to move up in any position in the industry, and like everyone I know that stuck with it you will have the same job until you stop working (you will have to take a side move into another department most likely). This is also the industry most likely to get touched by the "good idea fairy" so you will also be exposed to the highest levels of stupid, like 3 layers of outsourcing the NOC to an active warzone sort of stupid.

I should have known it was a bad idea in college when most of my classmates where ACTIVELY WORKING IN THE INDUSTRY TO PAY FOR SCHOOL so they could get a piece of paper that said they could do the thing they where already doing. But I did my 15 plus years and got out, I have my own business now selling drugs and it is way less sketchy.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago* (8 children)

    There is almost no ability to move up in any position in the industry

    Change jobs every three years until you find a place that doesn't suck.

    The insanity of the industry is that employers will hire some schmuck with "10 years experience" on their resume for twice what they're paying the guy who has worked at the firm for ten years.

    Eventually, you can get yourself into a position where you're unfireable, because you are the only one who knows about the secret button that keeps the whole business from falling over.

    That's when you can really squeeze'm

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Urgh, yeah it is just so bad. Most places don't even have a possible job above yours to even potentially move to. Where I was they literally sold us to a competitor (then unsold me as they forgot about a few contracts) and then just removed all the positions above us or related to our department. I lost 3 layers of bosses one day (not that anyone noticed much). And then expect people to just happily go on and on and on.

    The fact they could not hire anyone (I was the "new" guy for 10 years on my team) was down to really shitty hiring practices, that automated the requirements in such a way that the only people who could get an interview would have had to lie on their applications. They where desperately trying to say they wanted to hire more people but no one was "qualified", meanwhile they froze pay for years (really showing that dood that was there for years how much they care).

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The fact they could not hire anyone (I was the “new” guy for 10 years on my team) was down to really shitty hiring practices

    Not a bad time to start collectively bargaining, especially if you've got your fingers in the dam.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago*

    HA, not at that sort of place. Unions where never even allowed to be talked about, they instafired anyone that even hinted, illegal or not they did not let that happen.

    Edit: oh and everything did fall apart, but like a lot of large companies, they don't care/notice. We used to joke around that we where in the business of getting out of business, and business was goood

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    When android and ios were taking off, I'd see job requirements saying 8 to 10 years experience in Android development.

    It hadn't been out 8 to 10 years.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Oddly a very common occurrence. It was normally one or a combo of 3 impossible things:

    • Experience needed with a thing that has not existed for the time asked for (like your example)
    • Experience needed with a thing that does not exist at all (typos or just full on bullshit like "5 years in QQR8F deployment")
    • Or my favourite, Experience needed in a tool/program that is only used by the company like our proprietary call management software.
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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Change jobs every three years until you find a place that doesn’t suck.

    Most of my social circle is in tech and we're spread across or have worked for basically every company in our city and that isn't really a thing here.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    You're dead on about the 5% of what you learned thing. I'm on like my 20th tech job and pretty much every one has been different. What I learned in school has applied to only the most basic aspects of any of those jobs. Everything else was learning as I go and just generally understanding how PCs and software work. I have done fairly well with upward mobility (currently about as high as I can go without taking another leadership position) but I had to bust my ass to do it and it was only because I always stood out because of that so I would be first choice. There were never enough promotions/mobility to go around to everyone that was deserving.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    If you talk to people who went to different schools you quickly realize that its all different. I spent a lot of time learning antenna theory, Cisco networking and really out of date system admin, while on the other side of the nation my future co workers where learning soldering, cable terminology and text based HTML.

    I was on the college board of governors and the thing I learned is that no one knows what computer science even is. Sad part is that it was the same for a lot of the subjects taught.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    My experience is so different to yours.

    Work a lot with what I studied, need the algebra very often. I still have people randomly contacting me for interviews. People move a lot, it's rare to be in the same function for over 3 years.

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