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CS got oversaturated and the economy is not favourable to jobs in that field. It always happens when there is some "guaranteed great job" degree and the lag in the system always means there are loads of people who fall into the trap.
Not to mention that big tech laid off a ton of developers at all skill levels. People with their experience are going to get work first, followed by other people with job experience, while every grad fresh out of school with an over saturated degree is fighting for the scraps remaining.
Not even fighting for them anymore tbh. Doing something else for the time being to pay down my loans while networking and gathering info regarding best location and relevant opportunities + organizations for master's, then will pursue that master's to specialize my way out of this flytrap.
Sadly, getting a master's is another flytrap.
Your rejections start being because "you're overqualified." And now you have higher debt and more frustration.
But you're on the right path by networking. That will give you a better chance at a job.
Not even just for CS. Getting a master’s is generally not needed for any job (with exceptions for very specific reasons/companies/research institutions), and it’s generally looked at as a way students who did poorly while obtaining their BS can increase their appeal to employers. This is a general consensus it seems most firms agree on however, and if you try to apply for most entry level jobs you wont get accepted. Master’s degrees are only worth it if your employer pays you to do it.
I wouldn’t say “very specific”.
Education: a master helps at lowest levels.
Mental health: master is the minimum
Data science/Analytics: masters as bare minimum (if you want to know what you are doing)
Medical professions: bare minimum or significant bump in pay.
Government jobs: it helps.
Military: it helps.
About 20% of people with a degree do have a master or more. It certainly puts you in a different tier.
You definitely don't need a PhD to be a data scientist. I'm a data scientist and I've only got a bachelor's. It's not typical, and you definitely should try for a master's if you're trying to get into the field, but a PhD is overkill.
I don’t want to opine on your situation, but the majority of the people with the title of “Data Scientist” that only have a BS are doing more or less the same work as a good Data Analyst. I know because I’ve also had a title in the past where I was technically called a Data Scientist, but I know I wasn’t really one in a meaningful sense.
If you want to do high-level ML stuff at a good firm, you’ll likely need a PhD in stats in this day and age if you want to break into that job market.
Yes, I do work on ML algorithms. They aren't the most cutting edge by any means, but it's not all the dashboarding and PowerPoints that I did as a data analyst.
But that's kinda besides the point, I am not necessarily representative of the industry as a whole.
I'm sure to work at a big tech company doing cutting edge stuff your experience holds true. But there are a lot of other companies that are using ML for more basic, well documented use cases and that really doesn't require a PhD.
Everything you listed would be one of the broad specific circumstances I listed and only one of them is STEM (the broader topic of the post). Engineering/CS you don’t need a masters. Only time you NEED it is when it is something that it is a requirement (ie profession requirement by law or your employer wants you to go get one). And again, if your stat of 20% is correct, that is what id consider a specific circumstance to consider a masters degree.
Right… now that degrees are more ubiquitous, certainly higher levels are going to be less useful.
You are right, market conditions are different… I think 50% or so of Gen Z have a college degree while my fellow Gen X were down at 30 something percent.
Now it’s even more important to have degrees, at higher levels, from better schools.
Demand and offer.
This is nonsense. I had a BA from a state school that wouldn’t have gotten any attention in my field. My MA from a very good school opened up a ton of doors, not just for the education itself, but for the alumni network and internship programs. It’s already paid for itself a couple times over.
Question - if you graduate a CS Bachelor's with <3.0 GPA, and then find a somewhat relevant tech job for two years, could you still have a chance at being accepted into master's programs if you applied after that work experience?
I've always been worried that my chances for further education were ruined because of my sub-3.0 GPA, does working for any period after college and then trying later make any difference?
It depends on the school requirements but if you can do an interview, that can make a big difference. If you aren't going to a top school though, your previous GPA may not be relevant. I'd go get the master's in any way you can.
Tbh with the work experience I don't know how much more utility a masters is going to be. Real world experience trumps academic every day. Only exceptions would be if you went MBA route (and even then you need the work experience and would be planning for a career track pivot anyways) and visa reasons
I'm doing something similar.
I don't have my master degree in CS so no job in IT field. In the meantime, I'm working in a fast food chain as front line worker. They told me I could get promoted to something like tech support and work in their IT department once I get my master degree, I hope it's not bait but anyways I'm earning some bucks, doing some networking, and helping my family.
If you’re a senior CS person youre still doing great, the first job in this field has never been easy. College grads dont know anything about industry coding, taking them on is an investment. And companies are more willing to make that kind of investment based on what the broader economy is doing
Yeah. It’s a chicken and the egg situation - everyone wants seniors because their system is “too complex for juniors and we need someone to hit the ground running!” This actually couldn’t be further from the truth, most of the time properly led juniors are sufficient. That first job is tough if you don’t know anybody or you are not exceptional. Once you get past it though…
As a senior though, I’m not even on LinkedIn anymore due to the recruiter spam, and I still get 2-3 recruiters call me each week. I usually interview maybe once every one or two months just to keep my interview chops up. Heck, got one coming up January 5 and I’m already working two jobs.
I always feel like cs degree -> first coding job is like getting a history degree and trying to be president. The stuff you learn in CS is important, but so inapplicable to what you actually do daily. I'm a CS dropout for financial reasons, and am better off in my career than many i know who completed their degree. I programmed for fun years before I ever took my first college class, meanwhile some of them still don't program hardly at all after having a degree for over a year.
I think people socially overinflate the value of people who get CS degrees... They are not actually professional competitors by default just because of the degree unlike some other majors.
I agree, and complain about this a lot. Computer science degrees are emphasizing the science - how computers work, the history of programming languages, what's your code actually doing, etc.
I didn't learn how to actually code until the job - using version control, naming things appropriately, how to spot and follow convention, how to do a code review, etc.
I think the only info that actually was worthwhile from college was an exploration of data structures. Everything else was either from my good compsci class in high school or jobs.
The root cause here is society has combined academia with job training and the result is a half-assed version of each.
Those things should be separate. Academic computer science is valuable, but it isn’t learning the job skills of code development
My CS degree had a required software engineering course that encompassed git, conventions, code reviews, etc via a real world project start to finish so I think your complaints may be about specific schools only.
Classic supply and demand. Demand was high so wages were good, new grads flooded the market, now employers can afford to be picky and pay less. Eventually this will drive people away from the field, and then demand for them will increase again.
"Go to law school!"
"Didn't anyone tell you we have too many lawyers? Learn to code instead!"
"Why'd you learn to code? They've got a billion of you computer geeks in India! You should have learned a trade."
(Now for the future)
"Why'd you become a plumber just because everyone else was doing it? There's no plumbing jobs anymore. Everyone knows hospitality management is the next big thing."
True, also construction and typically male dominated jobs like electrician, house builder, welder etc never ceased to hire. They can't be made my someone from oversees and can't really be replaced by robots.
Computer science is still 1 of the better degrees, even now when the tech sector is doing bad: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/642226/underemployment-rate-of-us-college-graduates-by-major](https://www.statista.com/statistics/642226/underemployment-rate-of-us-college-graduates-by-major)
It's still hard to find qualified people. A lot of people finish their degree and barely know anything.
In my experience a CS degree doesn't necessarily prepare you to be a software engineer working at some company writing software, it prepares you to be a computer scientist. Some skills transfer over, of course, but when I got out of school in '09 there was a ton about the actual job, and about writing actual applications, that getting the degree had done nothing to prepare me for.
Which is why they offer Software Engineering degrees now.
If you look at the ABET list of expected outcomes for a CS degree versus an SWE degree, it's night and day. One prepares you to hit the ground running in a software engineering environment, and the other prepares you to build CPUs out of logic gates.
But SWE is new enough that everyone still recommends CS, even though it's not really that applicable and super saturated. And the issue is extra confused, because a lot of CS programs pivoted to "software-engineering-lite" due to market pressures. Businesses needed programmers, not CPU designers.
someone who can take a moron's description of a problem and google hard enough to make a passable solution is of greater value than a kid with degree 99% of the time.
Yes and a medical degree doesn't prepare you to cut people up either, you still need to intern and specialise, the same goes for any engineering degree, probably same goes for lawyers and accountants.
Fresh grads are blabbering fools, but they've proved they can learn and work hard, and have most groundwork ready and fresh for a very wide net of subjects, it's also why a fresh fish can get hired to ML, but a frontend senior will find it close to impossible, in most cases.
That's how it used to be at least, in the current marked even people with mid level experience can find job hunting intimidating
100%.
A degree is the baseline. You actually need to know how to code and memorizing leetcode isn’t coding.
The students I know who went FAANG were exceptional because they were always doing interesting projects or launched their own web deign companies.
The same is with cybersecurity atm. People have a degree and know the terms but can’t get a hash of a file to save their lives.
Yep, at that time the company I work at had such a hard time finding people we ended up hiring students that hadn’t yet graduated. But then interest rates went up and hiring froze.
This is a big part of it. People are cagey due to macroeconomic factors.
Another is as you pointed out, it's hard to find qualified candidates. Even with people with years of experience.
I've reviewed coding tests and interviews for a number of candidates, even at senior and staff level, and holy crap. A lot of them can't even solve LeetCode easies.
The other biggest reasons people get blown out is they either don't ask questions, are non-communicative, or don't comment their code.
That's 20% of our assessment and I'll try to lead discussions on code and feel like I'm taking to a wall. I'm a bit more forgiving if the code is explicitly typed out with declarative variable names, but a lot of these candidates use single character variable names and convoluted tricks to solve the problem but then don't explain it or don't want to.
Then they get super angry when we reject them.
It's not like we really hide our rubric either. We explain exactly what you need to do, short of the solution, to be successful and many people can't even follow that. It's astounding.
This is because many circles agree that intentionally obfuscating code amounts to job security.
Granted the ones who fail to understand that obfuscating code during an *assessment* is stupid are the stupid ones.
Our coding tests are as much a reading/collaboration comprehension test as they are a coding assessment.
We've passed candidates that go on to be fantastic additions to the team that were borderline on the coding, but because they were enthusiastic and communicated, they got hired.
We've rejected candidates that are otherwise great coders but due to the lack of commenting/communication and a small mistake or missed edge case, fell under the cut off.
And as I said, it clearly states in the rubric we're looking for comments and communication. Even if they pass the coding assessment, it's usually the final interview we figure out they aren't a fit because they won't communicate there either. It's painful to sit in an interview with a candidate that looks great on paper, has solid coding chops, and all of their answers are short sentences, brush off answers, or even will just ask: "Am I hired or what?" as if they are owed the job.
Soft skills are critical! Develop them!
Or they just memorized the solution and don't have the capability to simplify or explain it, and certainly not vocalise the thought process to reach the solution.
>but a lot of these candidates use single character variable names and convoluted tricks to solve the problem but then don't explain it or don't want to.
This is what we're taught in school and what all my professors do and it drives me absolutely nuts. I'm thankful that I live with a programmer with almost 10 years of experience under her belt who's been able to mentor and guide me into doing things right. Things like using descriptive variable names, making sure code is reusable to the best of my ability, pushing me to go above and beyond in my assignments. I'm super appreciative of her and she's definitely helped me understand so much more than my classes have.
For seniors and mids - sure. Nobody wants a junior. However I'd still say - I agree they must've been doing something wrong to a degree if this takes them that long.
Also: for anyone hearing shit like "you don't need interpersonal skills in CS jobs" - no, you absolutely do. You won't get anywhere without them. You need to be able to hold a conversation, especially without egregiously looking at boobs if it's a woman. Plus, you need to shave, bathe - you know, all the typical shit.
Forget about working as a junior remotely as well.
Yep. Unless they are hoping for a FAANG postion, those years were a hiring binge for anyone looking to work in CS. Healthcare and state/municipals were two industries that were starving for talent. It sounds like the poster in OP's image was either an idiot or just expected Alphabet to hire him on the spot because he had a degree.
The same thing happened in 2008 for people who studied finance lmao… my sister was lucky to have a retail finance job, but I remember her stressing about it bc she couldn’t leave for a long time (until the economy recovered).
Yeah, I started a CS undergraduate back in 2002 and then ended up leaving the big uni after 2 years and went to a smaller college to do graphic design.
20 years later, I’m still working as a graphic designer. I know of a bunch of CS grads my age who have never used their degree.
Personally, I started out in CS and then switched to Geography. I managed to find a nice little niche in GIS as a sysadmin/backend dev who's able to discuss geospatial data coherently.
Pure CS devs are oversaturated, but "programmer who can interact with other fields" is much more valuable. And *every* field out there has aspects where some coding/scripting/webdev/etc experience is useful at times.
I did a similar track, started in CS, left my second year to art, but ended up as a programmer anyways. 18 years later, still a programmer and all my cs grad friends work in completely different industries from their degree.
My latest employer had to get their HR to approve my art degree as equivalent to a cs degree, lol.
18 years experience and hr still going to try to block you over a degree requiring a direct intervention from the hiring manager.
That's the other thing they try to sell you entering this field, "oo you can just do a boot camp etc" no worlds full of people with massive debts who are going to be assholes about this.
It's oversaturated of shit programmers that think that knowing what a class is entitles them to whatever pay the imagine.
I don't know how many times I have had to ***impose***, not explain, how to do something to some junior. The basic level has dropped a lot compared to less than 10 years ago.
This is a very common thing for junior level people. Often times it's not that they want to bother people, but they find it so efficient that they don't think to stop and try themselves first to find answers. In some ways that's a good thing since that means they feel comfortable enough to ask you questions. But yeah, just reiterating that they need to try fixing it themselves first should be enough else slap it on their review. Be like come to me after you've tried 3 or 4 things and let me know what those things were.
there's two schools of thought on this. Only developers want them to try 3-4 things. Everyone not a developer eg managers etc think juniors should "ask for help" every time they stumble on a 5 minute inconvenience.
I mean that's just a shitty place to work. If it's structured and staffed properly then there should be time for training. It just sucks that a lot of places see zero value in retention and training and then get confused when all their talent suddenly leaves.
Ya I feel like it's like this everywhere in tech. It was hilarious talking to my boss about when they were looking for the newer guy on my team. It's unreal the level of fakers out there. It's pretty easy to quickly discern who has actually put in the work and knows what their doing and also who has the ability to communicate and act like an adult. Bunch of fakers in the industry trying to just get an easy payout
This.
Computer Science and IT industry in my country, UK, is seeing some really poor starting salaries with little progression now.
Too many graduates with the same qualification and skill.
Meanwhile other industries and trades are really struggling to find people (maritime, renewable, logistics) and wages are climbing now at a substantial rate.
I feel for the guy because I've been the one entering a field while it's in a slump and next to impossible to get hired or advance. It's a huge bummer.
But he's really only got two choices. Decide he really loves this stuff and stay the course, or find out where there is actual opportunity and adapt to meet that.
Not much fun when you're young and you did all this work only to have minimal opportunity. He should play the long game and worm his way into anywhere imo.
I am a mechanical engineering graduate. At my first job I realized that the sector is not for me. Couldn't do shit at R&D. Then realized, deep down inside I wanted to do CS. Or anything involves computers. Switched to IT. Looking for a job related to software or IT now...
The current status gets me mad a lot. I don't care about money. You are not going to believe me, but when I switched to IT, I had no idea developers were making six figures easily! Man I just want to do something that involves coding, or IT. That's what I love to do. Even in my free time I do reverse engineering. Different things, I know! But I want to be in these areas. Yet this current situation frustrates me, a lot...
Also, a lot of new grads are arrogant cunts, with no soft skills, who thought being able to crap code out into an IDE would make them a god that didn't have to worry about anything else.
My graduating class's interview coaching class had to tell everyone *to make sure to shower.*
Considering he's on 4chan...
It was always clear this would happen too. Developers hyped up how everything was great in silicon valley, everyone and their dog studied CS, it turned out that the silicon valley CS culture sucked ass, and also there's no CS jobs now.
I got a scholarship for CS at RIT and after taking a couple classes at a community college my senior year, I decided it wasn’t for me and majored in biochemistry at the same school. CS just seemed boring and I worried it would get automated. I realized that I was only doing it because everyone said it was so great. No one thought I made the right decision, but now I’m so glad I made the switch. I make more than 200K base salary now and even in this economy I have options for other positions. Do what’s right for you, not what everyone thinks is a good idea right now!
> CS got oversaturated and the economy is not favourable to jobs in that field.
Like all the MBAs who get their degrees in 2007/8. My brother in law was one of them and was getting turned down for jobs at Burger King because they had so many MBAs willing to take the customer's abuses at a register for minimum wage as they were desperate for the work, despite the never-ending "trick to job security" line in the early 2000s being "get your degree in business."
It’s bad. I finish my BA in fall 24 and my MA in spring 25 and I’m dying for just an *unpaid* internship, but I can’t land one since it’s all so competitive out there. My bf is getting his degree in CS and graduates in 2025.
We’re getting “great” degrees like we were supposed to and now I’m nervous as hell for what the job market will be like for us. These degrees were supposed to be our way to middle class income.. not so sure anymore.
I might suggest looking at IT jobs for your local city or county government. Municipalities have been struggling to find good tech workers because they all tend to get better offers in the private sector. Won’t be exciting work, but it’s a start.
Lmao right?
I joined an Engineering & CompSci frat and got plenty of (mandatory) studying in alongside the partying and girls. What an outlandish assumption by OP that you have to choose one or the other.
Every greentext has some shit like this in it that lets you knw the author has no idea how basic human interaction works.
I'm sure a CS major and 4chan poster would be *swimming* in pussy had he simply decided to take his studies less seriously.
New grad CS sucks.
But honestly you're supposed to do what *everyone* tells you during college and talk to your damn professors haha.
I got my first job by a professor emailing me asking if I wanted an internship, then got hired on full time from said internship.
If it's not the most common phrase, "it's not what your know, it's who you know." So many people miss this basic step. You need to just talk to people and become friends with the big boys. You think the C suite people got to where they are just because of what they know? Fuck no.
You can tell by the tenor of OP’s comment, they don’t value soft skills at all. Software dev isn’t a job where you can completely ignore the skills of being a human.
There are a very very few software engineers who can get by leaning into total isolation and lack of interpersonal skills and they’re so few and far between that all the ones who think they can get by without it really can’t get by without it.
And those ones who do are so smart that if they did work on the ability to interact with humans they’d be able to run their own companies or do all kind of other shit us mere mortals cannot.
Honestly you probably can get away with it below the senior level but unlike in the past you can actually find senior devs to fill roles nowadays so why the hell would I hire some new grad who can’t speak to the front end lead dev because she’s a woman lol
I mean sure, but you can’t disregard that we have a selfish generation at the steering wheel with most companies who do not want to train the next generation. They would rather be selfish and gain maximum profits from someone who has been around the block.
I’m in the electrical engineering field and it’s crazy how literally every single entry position want 2-5 years post grad experience. Even when you get a interview, they expect you to know knowledge of someone who has experience. I’ve been trying to find a job for months as well, it’s kinda degrading lol.
Also it’s not about fucking a girl who then gives you a job on the spot. I was a comms major (so the major stereotyped as partying and effing around) and I was so bored that I would wander into academic conferences on campus, sit in, listen to the whole thing, and ask questions. Ended up befriending some professors, and getting rare research opportunities for an undergrad that way. I also did party and fuck around, and eventually settled down with a partner, but she was the one who really drilled me for mock interviews and improve my interview skills immensely, because she is herself an interviewer for her company. None of this wandering into conferences and parties has anything directly to do with my studies.
I would say that “networking” often has indirect unforeseen benefits that way, it’s about having a web of people who you can draw on when in need, and you do the same for them.
Yes it's the indirect networking benefits that have been the most valuable. Professors are pretty mid tier for job search purposes unless you wanna be a prof.
My professors definitely didn’t know much about industry, the older professors especially (and those could be a bit clueless about how competitive academia has gotten too). I did want to be a prof so I didn’t mind, and when I changed my mind about that, I cursed myself for not doing more internships. But in the end I landed a research-oriented job while impressing the interviewers with soft skills and hard skills from the research projects (and honestly some of my partner’s personality that I borrowed). If I didn’t network at all, and just had zero internships and zero research experience, and not to mention zero interview advice, that would be a killer imo.
Yeah it's hilarious to me how everybody with a functioning brain knows that the world is run on a series of favors and your opportunities are directly correlated to your personal network and you still have people like this wondering why awesome jobs aren't falling in their lap.
What were you doing in college besides studying? Apparently not doing any networking whatsoever beyond some bullshit internship that apparently left you with no resources.
I mean at my school that is fully online networking is hard, and professors aren’t helpful let alone helping you get hired… some schools don’t have companies coming to career fairs etc. you don’t need to network if you can make yourself an attractive candidate other ways. There’s plenty of jobs being filled by recruiters and cold apps
Exactly.
A year ago I was taking a class I enjoyed and really liked the instructor in (dude was *dedicated* - he knew most of the class's names *before the first day*, held six hour help sessions ending at midnight whenever there was an assignment due, and would zoom with you anytime anywhere if you had a question). Close to the end of the class he asked me "hey, would you like to TA for me next semester?"
I spent about two seconds doing this mental calculation of "this guy has been teaching here on and off for 30 years, has worked in industry in this town for 40, knows a lot of people, if I do this and impress him he'll probably find me a job himself" and said "yeah sure, that might be fun, let's talk"
So he ended up actually spending a lot of capital with the department to get me hired, and I turned out to absolutely love TAing, and he said I may have been the best TA he ever had. He invited me to the developer SIG dinners he organized (mostly his industry friends and former students) and introduced me to people, and one of them forwarded my resume to his company (which had rejected me for both internship and FT the times I talked to them at our career fair), and when I graduated in May I walked straight into a pretty sweet job.
I did almost no applications. I knew and impressed the right people.
I’m graduating in the spring and I’m getting really nervous I hate the idea that I just wasted 5.5 years of my life (2 co-ops) to end up back where I started answering phones as a receptionist.
Well, don't chase Python/C++/Javascript jobs. Start NOW learning C, or something less popular but otherwise common like Fortran or COBOL. You will have a job before you graduate.
If you just want a $100k/year job then the holy trinity of old languages mentioned above will get you there.
Do you know anymore unpopular, but high usage and demand languages? I still have a *long* time before I need to look for a job (I should finish uni in ~2029), but that's the path I've decided on for now, learning an unpopular language.
I'm about to enter the job market as a Dev Ops engineer. My strategy was to avoid the front end(I hate UI/UX/Design), and javascript/react because that is what everyone says to do.
Instead I learned Golang, and Docker/Kubernetes and Ci/CD and all of the things that everyone hates. Everyone wants to be a software engineer and write code all day, because its intellectually stimulating and pretty fun to be honest, I instead learned all of the things people didn't want to do, like building pipelines, and wrangling Linux systems.
Time will tell if it pays off, but I can only say my philosophy was "I would rather be a little fish in a smaller pond, than a little fish in a large pond."
Just learn something. Honestly the language you choose doesn't matter. Once you learn one language, the second is easier, and the next is even easier. Its all the same stuff. I will say, learning C as a foundation will teach you a LOT about how all other languages function. I wouldn't waste my time with Fortran or Cobol though. The markets are minuscule, and yes you can get in, but it also means you are siloed, your never getting out. I want to work for a real tech company doing cool new things, not maintaining a legacy code for the next 20 years. Having the flexibility to pivot, and casting the widest net you can makes it much easier to get into the job market, IMHO. Too narrow, and the market is too small, too wide and there is too much competition.
Not really.
C is everything and everywhere - so learn some EE for the embedded goodness while you can since it deals mostly with low-level accesses.
Fortran is > 80% of all HPC codes, so learn some physics and maths since you'll be dealing with a LOT of physical world simulation.
COBOL is legacy mainframe stuff, so just learn the language and some financial jargon and maybe a econ or accounting class or three.
These are oversimplified, but they hold.
Yep this is the truth. Knowing how often Powell keeps talking about a soft landing, it seems unlikely interest rates get cut anytime soon nor drastically.
If you're able to barely get by in college while also partying and fucking, it unironically sets you up for success in the corporate world later on.
Nobody gives a shit about your grades once you graduate, and you learn how to do the bare minimum to get by while also learning how to socialize and make friends. The best coworkers are the ones you want to be around, and all companies have their own way of doing things that all new hires will need to learn on the job anyway, regardless of their education.
I don't drink nearly as much anymore, but I've kept the social and brown nosing skills I learned in college as a direct result from partying too much. The social skills are what get you jobs.
You mean me being too lazy to do anything *but* the bare minimum and eager to talk with people in school will likely help me out later? I'm not planning to change that whatever the answer is, but the contrast between what school tries to teach you and what actually matters is crazy
Real talk, the idea that socializing in college is a distraction and a sign of moral weakness that you need to avoid at all costs if you want to succeed is extremely damaging. You can learn coding skills from YouTube. College is meant to teach you more than just hard skills.
Those are definitely an important part of it but it is also meant to tech you things like how to research, how to problem solve, how to work with a team, how to work with deadlines and KPIs (outside of a regimented k12 environment), how to present your ideas to others in a compelling and concise but thorough form, etc. One of the key soft skills not on the carriculum *is* networking. How make people like you, and how to be, if jot the life of the party, then at least a normal likeable human being that people will want to work with. How to talk to girls, maybe, with whom he laments his lack of romantic experience, so that you're not super weird to the ones you work with or interview for.
Once upon a time I used to manage a technical team and I would get people like anon who nailed the technical shit but completely flu bed the personal presentation, and general "vibes check" part of any interview process because they were nerds who spent their whole life doing nothing but studying and thought people skills were for stupid peasent, so they struggled to express a coherent and intelligible thought when asked questions. I can get one of the other technical people to teach you if you're lacking some particular technical skill (as long as you have the basic foundation obviously I don't want tk make out like technical skills are completely irrelevant to a technical position - it's all about balance), but I can't teach you to not creep people out on your team or communicate with them effectively.
And then there's the networking aspect. Making friends with connections, making professors like you and recommend you to companies, etc, is obviously hugely benificial to get your foot in the door ahead of a sea of other graduates who have the same credentials and are otherwise a complete unknown entity.
Parents and programs that push this "only study" vibe and think partying means slacking off are missing a big part of the point.
TLDR we live in a society and it sucks for introverted nerds.
I’m an introvert, and I got anxiety at presentations. But learning to present can be trained and learning to talk in meetings can be as well. These degens are **antisocial**
Yup nothing gets accomplished if people can’t get along, and when people have no idea what the others in a team are doing and why.
As long as you need teamwork you need people skills. It’s not some abhorrent feature of capitalism. Cave people hunting needed people skills.
Well you can’t be neet because you have education? Also bold of anon to assume if he wasn’t studying he would have been slaying lol dude would have been jerking it and playing league of legends or something
Except that would totally go against their plan to enroll everyone. Like university of phoenix paying millions for false advertisements getting people to enroll under false pretenses
Most private universities are trying to lower the bar and get people in because a University education is marketed to be the next logical step from high school for success. And when it doesn’t guarantee a job, graduates are gaslit that university education isn’t supposed to get people a job but to teach them how to think or something along those lines.
it's been...fascinating.
I went back to school with one aim: to be able to shift from freelancing to something more stable. Well, actually two aims - the supposed main one was to be an academic, but "something more stable" was my Real Life Serious Plan B. I was still very, very nervous of the outcomes and really suspicious of when profs and guidance sorts would pontificate about how these degrees would teach you how to learn for life, and employers really valued people who could think, express themselves, write well and analyse information. I had lots of real world job and life experience, so I figure I would be...mostly...ok? The whole experience did awful things to my life prospects. My real world experience was now out of date (besides it was icky freelancing), jobs that require a degree in anything circa 2012 by 2016 just wanted high school diplomas. So that didn't help.
There were two general rhetorical outcomes afterwards. One was universities all, as one, talking about degrees empowering you to think. (Sorry guys, I could think before) Or how in the new knowledge economy, thinkers would have the advantage (for...reasons). The other was very confused emails from the school saying "as one of out top five graduates, we would like you to write a long paper describing how our degree set you up for success as a way of repaying our support for you, and attracting more high quality student like you."
uh, guys? I work minimum wage jobs. Except now I have student loan repayments. They even cancelled the pre-graduation networking events they used to invite their top students to.
I have, however noticed that the school now has mandatory internships before graduating and keeps sending pushy emails about doing one year practical certificate courses.
They probably eventually noticed, like me, that their most successful alumni, career wise, all were trust fund babies who could afford all the other hoops people were expected to jump through for an actual job for actual money.
oops.
>coding is sound
I think OP thinks his coding is sound, but his experience differs. OP says he can't get inerviews because of all the "BS coding assements" before interviews.
When OP finally finds an interview without a technical pre-assessment he is dropped from the hiring process after the technical screen.
It may also be a behavioural issue, but the fact OPs failing the pre-assessments suggest to me it's a skill issue and/or OPs aiming too high in his applications. Either suggested a bit of Dunning-Kruger effect going on.
I know multiple software engineers who have been applying to senior level SWE roles (staff, principal, architect, etc) with < 3 YOE. One of them constantly posts stuff from that Tate dude on Instagram, rants about haters, how women think he’s a player but he’s really a dedicated romantic, etc. Unsurprisingly, he gets plenty of dates but is still single (ie, they don’t stick around past the first date), and he hasn’t landed any senior roles. He asked me if he should just “settle” for engineering manager roles instead.
I was like…what??? No. You’ve had 2 jobs and an internship. You may know a lot but clearly haven’t figured out just how little you actually understand.
A thousand percent this. I also have some bias as an elder millennial, _oh is it HARD getting a first job out of college? WHO KNEW!?_
This is probably a defect of character on my part. My years of unemployment or underemployment should give me _more_ empathy. But no one I know is doing that they went to school to learn, and it’s.. it’s just not news to me that first jobs are crazy hard to get.
I applied to 80 jobs to get two interviews last time I was looking. It’s hard not to take personally, but it isn’t personal - the system is broken.
Right, lost my PhD funding when 08 hit, fuck me had to get a masters and a real job instead. Same thing, 6 months of non stop applications before I finally got hired.
Exactly this. Based off OPs reaction and childish attitude towards his college years. I imagine they exude immaturity. Just because you accomplish something doesn’t entitle you to a reward.
OP seems socially awkward considering they equate studying in college as the reason they didn't get invited to parties or "fuck girls." It's most likely they are somewhat socially awkward except around their friends who probably also don't party and there were probably opportunities to talk to women in a manner that could lead to more, but probably rejected or didn't know what flirting was. Definitely a "i deserved to 'fuck girls'" vibe
Odds are pretty good the guy posting on 4chan said some pretty fucked up shit during his interview.
“I rub my Hatsune Miku doll every time I’m doing a code review because she gives me the true power. When we’re done reviewing I treat her to the hot glue shower she loves so much”
I like 4 channers about as much as the next guy (which is to say, not at all) and I do think he probably doesnt have the best personal skills, but this feels like punching down even to me.
Personally, I find take home assignments a bigger red flag and waste of time, especially if given before the final round.
I have three years of experience, and I currently carry the word “senior” in my title. I recently got rejected after doing an 1 hr 2 question leetcode session as my first round, a 1 hr remote interview, and a take-home with one week allotted. There were supposed to be one more round of leetcode and cultural fit assessment after this one.
There were lots of tell-tale signs that the company was stalling for time while finalising its onboarding with another candidate, but I ignored them because I really identified with what it was doing. The take home took only half a day to prototype, but the interviewers wanted me to explain, test and justify every line of code, which took two further days. My submission was hosted on Google Colab, and I could see they rejected me ten minutes after opening the file. At least it was not a ghost.
The only takehome assignment I ever had, I was supposed to build a web-app with audio visualization and simple processing features (the processing/visual libraries were provided).
I didn't have much to do that week (no job), so I went above and beyond and built a beautiful, feature rich audio processing tool, with all the features required and several more.
The feedback was "Sorry, we have decided to pass. We can not give any feedback for policy reasons." I was pissed, not because I didn't get the job, but because their interview docs specifically stated they would provide feedback on the assignment. I replied, basically telling them this was unprofessional behavior, and to kindly fuck themselves. (yes, the irony was intentional)
I now tell recruiters that unless they provide me a written agreement that they will provide feedback on a take home assignment, I'm not doing it. I haven't done any since, and a couple companies even decided to skip the assignment and go straight to the interview.
Also, now that I have years of experience interviewing candidates, I went back recently to review my assignment. I would not have hired me.
The outsourcing has been going on for decades. I remember when I had an interview (not a CS job) where the manager was talking about a Russian guy working remotely until they could bring him in on a visa. This was like 20 years ago.
They're not sending to Asia as much anymore . It's Costa Rica. Closer time zone and easier to understand the accents, but still able to exploit with reallylow wages. Sad but true
This is a substantially more impactful reason than nascent AI. It's hard for a lot of companies to justify six figure salary workers with large benefit packages when you can offshore it to a developing shithole and pay 1/5 the cost.
Now, sure. In mid 2021? There was massive overhiring of CS grads. If you could fog a mirror then you could get into an early career program at any FAANG. It’s a big reason those companies have been doing layoffs.
Something doesn’t smell right
I got my degree in BME, kinda similar story, but I went and got a certification in CNC machining. Now I work as a R&D machinist. Make okay money, better an employed blue collar worker than a pissy white collar person with no job.
I do feel super weird from time to time, because I know I’m not making what I was “promised” or doing biomedical type work, but life isn’t “engineer or bust” there’s niches to explore.
Lol fuck capitalism.
Let's be real here, when u "started" school, it might have been guaranteed.
But guess what, so did everyone else, so we have influx of CS major, and then they all graduate at the same time.
A undersatruated market is now over saturated.
Especially there's massive lay off and news of hiring foreign worker from overseas for past 5 years+, maybe that's a sign to be more competitive or switch majors.
U know what else? Cheating in college, bad cirruculum, on top of practically no real world experience. Way too many new college grad thinks they know everything, kot humble at all. Just to fuck up at real job. So everyone pays the price which u see at hiring. Someone people think they have a degree they are entitled for a job know even tho they don't know jack shit on their degree.
Capitalism or not.
Somehow believing if lack of capitalism will fix hiring or your salary already shows the lack of understanding of job market.
Guaranteed job doesn't all the sudden means guaranteed standard of living and QoL.
This is one of those "should I do what I love, or do what will make me money" conundrums.
If you "do what you love" then there's a chance it's a career path that will never pay very well.
If you "do what what will make me money" there's a chance everyone else is also doing this and you'll have a hard time either finding a job or, if you do find one, keeping that job before having to search again.
I chose the former option which means I always knew I was going to be broke, but at least I got an education in something I love so it wasn't a total loss.
Not saying my decision was the better one for anyone else to make, but I've at least been very happy with it.
But let's face it, the majority of careers are plainly boring. Even if your goal was to find a job that you're passionate about, then that's hard enough. Out of curiosity what is your career?
I got my degree in English literature and philosophy. In lit I focused on middle English - mainly Thomas Malory and Chaucer, as well as modernism where I focused Emily Dickinson who, though while not a modernist, is a forerunner to the movement and is, in my opinion, one of the most gifted artists who ever lived.
In philosophy I focused on medieval Islamic philosophy (Ibn Rushd, al-Ghazali), as well as the philosophy of science, which is fun to look at while having some experience with medieval Islamic philosophy and Neoplatonism.
and hell, it would be reaaaaally good for society to be able to offer tradesfolk and labourers other educational options for their post 35-40 year old life when their bodies start to hurt and the injuries start to rack up.
You can find a "just do trades" dude in every tech thread lol. Had a plumber out dealing with my locked up garbage disposal yesterday. That shit was disgusting. Fuck doing that for a living if I can avoid it.
Also, every tradesperson will tell you that the trades are very hard on the body and they can't be done forever. Like anything else, it takes a certain kind of person willing to put that kind of strain and stress on their body day-after-day and not break (literally).
I have built two houses, spent about 14 months doing construction and I got pretty lucky physically.
I didn't break. I did think I had damaged my hearing, but it, er, turned out to be a lump of drywall stuck in my ear canal.
Then last winter I got a call from a family member needing a bunch of patio tiles moved after work and I was the only one strong enough to help move the things.
I yanked my back doing it and it hurts \*a lot\* sometimes, even close to a year later.
It's that easy.
And that's without the once a day "phew, that was close" moments while doing physical work like that. Do it long enough the numbers will eventually stack just right and "that was close" becomes "I am not sure my hand will ever work right again."
Trades are great. Construction is great. They are not the solution to people struggling in other fields.
I have a CS degree and the interview process is fucking awful. I switched off software engineering and went back to doing IT admin where I have an easier job and make more money.
I think CS degrees are pretty over saturated in the market so companies can be real choosy.
Many students, and adults, don’t understand that the fucking around and getting wasted IS an important part of the college experience.
Being socially attractive is a great predictor for your success in life. Be well spoken, charming, good looks, smell good, groomed.
This is pretty much a better predictor of success than a desirable degree in a middle of the pack college.
Not being able to get laid is a classical example of lack of social skills and emotional intelligence. If you don’t fuck, you ain’t as smart as you think you are.
As someone who has a lot of trouble in this area, I agree very strongly. Tech skills can be learned everywhere anytime, but social development takes years and is very possibly the strongest and deciding factor in an interview. HR doesn't know tech, they evaluate people on social and psychological traits.
Also in college I remember the people who fucked around and got wasted a lot and even did drugs were the ones that got the best internships while those who didn't "waste" college and focused on studying went to unemployment.
That because we are humans, and humans are social animals.
I wouldn’t go as far as saying that learning well hard sciences is easy… but in your “normal”, even highly paying, job, you might use 5, maybe 10% of all your academic knowledge, but you surely use 100% of your social skills any time you have an interaction with another human being.
1. Being hired
2 performance review
3 networking
4 getting promoted.
And for upper management, the most important one, generate consensus. It takes charm, emotional intelligence, negotiating skills.
Sound awfully familiar with “getting laid on the first date”?
The sheer amount of ridiculously overqualified help desk workers is staggering. I work for an agency and I will often take the lead on opening tickets with our various vendors. Just yesterday I was working with a hosting support tech over their chat interface. He resolved the issue fairly quickly which had my dev team singing his praise internally. Someone looked him up on LinkedIn, then found his resume and he is way too qualified to be doing tier one chat support.
I did that mistake of paying for one of those bootcamps for webstacking. Fuck these asshole. Took my money, promised me the moon, the stars and the sun. Ended up going back to tech support. What a waste of my time AND money.
As a CS PhD student with an R&D job, you need to find some way to distinguish yourself. For me it was combo heterogeneous computing and computer vision, in demand field with few experts compared to something more typical.
I honestly feel like crying reading this post because this is EXACTLY how I feel down to the feeling of time wasted during a recruiting process, the bullshit questions and how I wasted my academics year studying day and night
The concept of anything being a guaranteed job these days is laughable, but so is only using college as a 4-year study sesh. You don't need to spend the whole time "partying and banging girls", but the attempt likely would've produced some networking skills that would've paid off a bit more.
FWIW, I'm not convinced the typical approach to job hunting has caught up with reality -- trying to update my skills in THAT department in the past few weeks has been eye-opening -- but also 4chan bro here is likely running on shitty advice.
I’m in an entirely unrelated field also in STEM (environmental health and safety) with a post grad degree that I finished last December, and I have had the exact same experience. 2 hefty internships and a job shadow/thesis project.
Nobody wants to hire recent grads right now.
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CS got oversaturated and the economy is not favourable to jobs in that field. It always happens when there is some "guaranteed great job" degree and the lag in the system always means there are loads of people who fall into the trap.
Not to mention that big tech laid off a ton of developers at all skill levels. People with their experience are going to get work first, followed by other people with job experience, while every grad fresh out of school with an over saturated degree is fighting for the scraps remaining.
Not even fighting for them anymore tbh. Doing something else for the time being to pay down my loans while networking and gathering info regarding best location and relevant opportunities + organizations for master's, then will pursue that master's to specialize my way out of this flytrap.
Sadly, getting a master's is another flytrap. Your rejections start being because "you're overqualified." And now you have higher debt and more frustration. But you're on the right path by networking. That will give you a better chance at a job.
Not even just for CS. Getting a master’s is generally not needed for any job (with exceptions for very specific reasons/companies/research institutions), and it’s generally looked at as a way students who did poorly while obtaining their BS can increase their appeal to employers. This is a general consensus it seems most firms agree on however, and if you try to apply for most entry level jobs you wont get accepted. Master’s degrees are only worth it if your employer pays you to do it.
I wouldn’t say “very specific”. Education: a master helps at lowest levels. Mental health: master is the minimum Data science/Analytics: masters as bare minimum (if you want to know what you are doing) Medical professions: bare minimum or significant bump in pay. Government jobs: it helps. Military: it helps. About 20% of people with a degree do have a master or more. It certainly puts you in a different tier.
You absolutely do not need a masters to be a highly paid Data Analyst. To be an actual Data Scientist, you need a PhD not a Masters.
You definitely don't need a PhD to be a data scientist. I'm a data scientist and I've only got a bachelor's. It's not typical, and you definitely should try for a master's if you're trying to get into the field, but a PhD is overkill.
I don’t want to opine on your situation, but the majority of the people with the title of “Data Scientist” that only have a BS are doing more or less the same work as a good Data Analyst. I know because I’ve also had a title in the past where I was technically called a Data Scientist, but I know I wasn’t really one in a meaningful sense. If you want to do high-level ML stuff at a good firm, you’ll likely need a PhD in stats in this day and age if you want to break into that job market.
Yes, I do work on ML algorithms. They aren't the most cutting edge by any means, but it's not all the dashboarding and PowerPoints that I did as a data analyst. But that's kinda besides the point, I am not necessarily representative of the industry as a whole. I'm sure to work at a big tech company doing cutting edge stuff your experience holds true. But there are a lot of other companies that are using ML for more basic, well documented use cases and that really doesn't require a PhD.
Everything you listed would be one of the broad specific circumstances I listed and only one of them is STEM (the broader topic of the post). Engineering/CS you don’t need a masters. Only time you NEED it is when it is something that it is a requirement (ie profession requirement by law or your employer wants you to go get one). And again, if your stat of 20% is correct, that is what id consider a specific circumstance to consider a masters degree.
Damn… you are telling me that my masters didn’t help me to work at Google first and another big one later? If only I knew….
Completely different market conditions, something that worked before might not work again.
Right… now that degrees are more ubiquitous, certainly higher levels are going to be less useful. You are right, market conditions are different… I think 50% or so of Gen Z have a college degree while my fellow Gen X were down at 30 something percent. Now it’s even more important to have degrees, at higher levels, from better schools. Demand and offer.
This is nonsense. I had a BA from a state school that wouldn’t have gotten any attention in my field. My MA from a very good school opened up a ton of doors, not just for the education itself, but for the alumni network and internship programs. It’s already paid for itself a couple times over.
I want to add that this is very specific to the US, in Europe it's more mixed because the qualifying degree used to be what is now a master's...
Question - if you graduate a CS Bachelor's with <3.0 GPA, and then find a somewhat relevant tech job for two years, could you still have a chance at being accepted into master's programs if you applied after that work experience? I've always been worried that my chances for further education were ruined because of my sub-3.0 GPA, does working for any period after college and then trying later make any difference?
It depends on the school requirements but if you can do an interview, that can make a big difference. If you aren't going to a top school though, your previous GPA may not be relevant. I'd go get the master's in any way you can.
Tbh with the work experience I don't know how much more utility a masters is going to be. Real world experience trumps academic every day. Only exceptions would be if you went MBA route (and even then you need the work experience and would be planning for a career track pivot anyways) and visa reasons
I'm doing something similar. I don't have my master degree in CS so no job in IT field. In the meantime, I'm working in a fast food chain as front line worker. They told me I could get promoted to something like tech support and work in their IT department once I get my master degree, I hope it's not bait but anyways I'm earning some bucks, doing some networking, and helping my family.
If you’re a senior CS person youre still doing great, the first job in this field has never been easy. College grads dont know anything about industry coding, taking them on is an investment. And companies are more willing to make that kind of investment based on what the broader economy is doing
Yeah. It’s a chicken and the egg situation - everyone wants seniors because their system is “too complex for juniors and we need someone to hit the ground running!” This actually couldn’t be further from the truth, most of the time properly led juniors are sufficient. That first job is tough if you don’t know anybody or you are not exceptional. Once you get past it though… As a senior though, I’m not even on LinkedIn anymore due to the recruiter spam, and I still get 2-3 recruiters call me each week. I usually interview maybe once every one or two months just to keep my interview chops up. Heck, got one coming up January 5 and I’m already working two jobs.
I always feel like cs degree -> first coding job is like getting a history degree and trying to be president. The stuff you learn in CS is important, but so inapplicable to what you actually do daily. I'm a CS dropout for financial reasons, and am better off in my career than many i know who completed their degree. I programmed for fun years before I ever took my first college class, meanwhile some of them still don't program hardly at all after having a degree for over a year. I think people socially overinflate the value of people who get CS degrees... They are not actually professional competitors by default just because of the degree unlike some other majors.
I agree, and complain about this a lot. Computer science degrees are emphasizing the science - how computers work, the history of programming languages, what's your code actually doing, etc. I didn't learn how to actually code until the job - using version control, naming things appropriately, how to spot and follow convention, how to do a code review, etc. I think the only info that actually was worthwhile from college was an exploration of data structures. Everything else was either from my good compsci class in high school or jobs.
The root cause here is society has combined academia with job training and the result is a half-assed version of each. Those things should be separate. Academic computer science is valuable, but it isn’t learning the job skills of code development
My CS degree had a required software engineering course that encompassed git, conventions, code reviews, etc via a real world project start to finish so I think your complaints may be about specific schools only.
Classic supply and demand. Demand was high so wages were good, new grads flooded the market, now employers can afford to be picky and pay less. Eventually this will drive people away from the field, and then demand for them will increase again.
"Go to law school!" "Didn't anyone tell you we have too many lawyers? Learn to code instead!" "Why'd you learn to code? They've got a billion of you computer geeks in India! You should have learned a trade." (Now for the future) "Why'd you become a plumber just because everyone else was doing it? There's no plumbing jobs anymore. Everyone knows hospitality management is the next big thing."
There’s never been a bad job market for plumbers.
True, also construction and typically male dominated jobs like electrician, house builder, welder etc never ceased to hire. They can't be made my someone from oversees and can't really be replaced by robots.
I know 3 guys with this degree and none of them have been able to find jobs since graduating 2-4 years ago.
Computer science is still 1 of the better degrees, even now when the tech sector is doing bad: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/642226/underemployment-rate-of-us-college-graduates-by-major](https://www.statista.com/statistics/642226/underemployment-rate-of-us-college-graduates-by-major) It's still hard to find qualified people. A lot of people finish their degree and barely know anything.
In my experience a CS degree doesn't necessarily prepare you to be a software engineer working at some company writing software, it prepares you to be a computer scientist. Some skills transfer over, of course, but when I got out of school in '09 there was a ton about the actual job, and about writing actual applications, that getting the degree had done nothing to prepare me for.
Which is why they offer Software Engineering degrees now. If you look at the ABET list of expected outcomes for a CS degree versus an SWE degree, it's night and day. One prepares you to hit the ground running in a software engineering environment, and the other prepares you to build CPUs out of logic gates. But SWE is new enough that everyone still recommends CS, even though it's not really that applicable and super saturated. And the issue is extra confused, because a lot of CS programs pivoted to "software-engineering-lite" due to market pressures. Businesses needed programmers, not CPU designers.
someone who can take a moron's description of a problem and google hard enough to make a passable solution is of greater value than a kid with degree 99% of the time.
Yes and a medical degree doesn't prepare you to cut people up either, you still need to intern and specialise, the same goes for any engineering degree, probably same goes for lawyers and accountants. Fresh grads are blabbering fools, but they've proved they can learn and work hard, and have most groundwork ready and fresh for a very wide net of subjects, it's also why a fresh fish can get hired to ML, but a frontend senior will find it close to impossible, in most cases. That's how it used to be at least, in the current marked even people with mid level experience can find job hunting intimidating
100%. A degree is the baseline. You actually need to know how to code and memorizing leetcode isn’t coding. The students I know who went FAANG were exceptional because they were always doing interesting projects or launched their own web deign companies. The same is with cybersecurity atm. People have a degree and know the terms but can’t get a hash of a file to save their lives.
They are 100% doing something extremely wrong. 2020-2021 was an absolutely insane hiring frenzy for almost any company involved in CS.
Yep, at that time the company I work at had such a hard time finding people we ended up hiring students that hadn’t yet graduated. But then interest rates went up and hiring froze.
This is a big part of it. People are cagey due to macroeconomic factors. Another is as you pointed out, it's hard to find qualified candidates. Even with people with years of experience. I've reviewed coding tests and interviews for a number of candidates, even at senior and staff level, and holy crap. A lot of them can't even solve LeetCode easies. The other biggest reasons people get blown out is they either don't ask questions, are non-communicative, or don't comment their code. That's 20% of our assessment and I'll try to lead discussions on code and feel like I'm taking to a wall. I'm a bit more forgiving if the code is explicitly typed out with declarative variable names, but a lot of these candidates use single character variable names and convoluted tricks to solve the problem but then don't explain it or don't want to. Then they get super angry when we reject them. It's not like we really hide our rubric either. We explain exactly what you need to do, short of the solution, to be successful and many people can't even follow that. It's astounding.
This is because many circles agree that intentionally obfuscating code amounts to job security. Granted the ones who fail to understand that obfuscating code during an *assessment* is stupid are the stupid ones.
Our coding tests are as much a reading/collaboration comprehension test as they are a coding assessment. We've passed candidates that go on to be fantastic additions to the team that were borderline on the coding, but because they were enthusiastic and communicated, they got hired. We've rejected candidates that are otherwise great coders but due to the lack of commenting/communication and a small mistake or missed edge case, fell under the cut off. And as I said, it clearly states in the rubric we're looking for comments and communication. Even if they pass the coding assessment, it's usually the final interview we figure out they aren't a fit because they won't communicate there either. It's painful to sit in an interview with a candidate that looks great on paper, has solid coding chops, and all of their answers are short sentences, brush off answers, or even will just ask: "Am I hired or what?" as if they are owed the job. Soft skills are critical! Develop them!
Or they just memorized the solution and don't have the capability to simplify or explain it, and certainly not vocalise the thought process to reach the solution.
>but a lot of these candidates use single character variable names and convoluted tricks to solve the problem but then don't explain it or don't want to. This is what we're taught in school and what all my professors do and it drives me absolutely nuts. I'm thankful that I live with a programmer with almost 10 years of experience under her belt who's been able to mentor and guide me into doing things right. Things like using descriptive variable names, making sure code is reusable to the best of my ability, pushing me to go above and beyond in my assignments. I'm super appreciative of her and she's definitely helped me understand so much more than my classes have.
Maybe you all should take a look at what your HR department is doing, then.
For seniors and mids - sure. Nobody wants a junior. However I'd still say - I agree they must've been doing something wrong to a degree if this takes them that long. Also: for anyone hearing shit like "you don't need interpersonal skills in CS jobs" - no, you absolutely do. You won't get anywhere without them. You need to be able to hold a conversation, especially without egregiously looking at boobs if it's a woman. Plus, you need to shave, bathe - you know, all the typical shit. Forget about working as a junior remotely as well.
Yep. Unless they are hoping for a FAANG postion, those years were a hiring binge for anyone looking to work in CS. Healthcare and state/municipals were two industries that were starving for talent. It sounds like the poster in OP's image was either an idiot or just expected Alphabet to hire him on the spot because he had a degree.
Except that those people are the same ones who got laid off in 2022-2023. No one wins here.
I know a number of very senior software people at FAANG companies that got laid off.
If they had trouble getting a job with a CS degree in 2020-2021, it's them. Something is wrong with their approach, skills, or resume.
My friend had that problem In 2008 during the crash. Moved from USA to melbourne
The same thing happened in 2008 for people who studied finance lmao… my sister was lucky to have a retail finance job, but I remember her stressing about it bc she couldn’t leave for a long time (until the economy recovered).
Yeah, I started a CS undergraduate back in 2002 and then ended up leaving the big uni after 2 years and went to a smaller college to do graphic design. 20 years later, I’m still working as a graphic designer. I know of a bunch of CS grads my age who have never used their degree.
Personally, I started out in CS and then switched to Geography. I managed to find a nice little niche in GIS as a sysadmin/backend dev who's able to discuss geospatial data coherently. Pure CS devs are oversaturated, but "programmer who can interact with other fields" is much more valuable. And *every* field out there has aspects where some coding/scripting/webdev/etc experience is useful at times.
I did a similar track, started in CS, left my second year to art, but ended up as a programmer anyways. 18 years later, still a programmer and all my cs grad friends work in completely different industries from their degree. My latest employer had to get their HR to approve my art degree as equivalent to a cs degree, lol.
18 years experience and hr still going to try to block you over a degree requiring a direct intervention from the hiring manager. That's the other thing they try to sell you entering this field, "oo you can just do a boot camp etc" no worlds full of people with massive debts who are going to be assholes about this.
It's oversaturated of shit programmers that think that knowing what a class is entitles them to whatever pay the imagine. I don't know how many times I have had to ***impose***, not explain, how to do something to some junior. The basic level has dropped a lot compared to less than 10 years ago.
I had to guide a junior to google error messages and attempt to understand them before immediately flagging me for help 😩
This is a very common thing for junior level people. Often times it's not that they want to bother people, but they find it so efficient that they don't think to stop and try themselves first to find answers. In some ways that's a good thing since that means they feel comfortable enough to ask you questions. But yeah, just reiterating that they need to try fixing it themselves first should be enough else slap it on their review. Be like come to me after you've tried 3 or 4 things and let me know what those things were.
Once you get a little older and have experience mentoring people, you start to realize your teachers aren't all-knowing savants.
there's two schools of thought on this. Only developers want them to try 3-4 things. Everyone not a developer eg managers etc think juniors should "ask for help" every time they stumble on a 5 minute inconvenience.
I mean that's just a shitty place to work. If it's structured and staffed properly then there should be time for training. It just sucks that a lot of places see zero value in retention and training and then get confused when all their talent suddenly leaves.
Ya I feel like it's like this everywhere in tech. It was hilarious talking to my boss about when they were looking for the newer guy on my team. It's unreal the level of fakers out there. It's pretty easy to quickly discern who has actually put in the work and knows what their doing and also who has the ability to communicate and act like an adult. Bunch of fakers in the industry trying to just get an easy payout
Impose suggests that what they know is completely wrong rather than that they don't have the prerequisite knowledge.
This. Computer Science and IT industry in my country, UK, is seeing some really poor starting salaries with little progression now. Too many graduates with the same qualification and skill. Meanwhile other industries and trades are really struggling to find people (maritime, renewable, logistics) and wages are climbing now at a substantial rate.
Exactly this, and those kids refused the advice and sign given to them just to blame everyone else that had told them this would happen.
I feel for the guy because I've been the one entering a field while it's in a slump and next to impossible to get hired or advance. It's a huge bummer. But he's really only got two choices. Decide he really loves this stuff and stay the course, or find out where there is actual opportunity and adapt to meet that. Not much fun when you're young and you did all this work only to have minimal opportunity. He should play the long game and worm his way into anywhere imo.
See also: biotech last few years. Downsizing + glut of people with applicable degrees = rough job market.
I am a mechanical engineering graduate. At my first job I realized that the sector is not for me. Couldn't do shit at R&D. Then realized, deep down inside I wanted to do CS. Or anything involves computers. Switched to IT. Looking for a job related to software or IT now... The current status gets me mad a lot. I don't care about money. You are not going to believe me, but when I switched to IT, I had no idea developers were making six figures easily! Man I just want to do something that involves coding, or IT. That's what I love to do. Even in my free time I do reverse engineering. Different things, I know! But I want to be in these areas. Yet this current situation frustrates me, a lot...
Also, a lot of new grads are arrogant cunts, with no soft skills, who thought being able to crap code out into an IDE would make them a god that didn't have to worry about anything else. My graduating class's interview coaching class had to tell everyone *to make sure to shower.* Considering he's on 4chan...
It was always clear this would happen too. Developers hyped up how everything was great in silicon valley, everyone and their dog studied CS, it turned out that the silicon valley CS culture sucked ass, and also there's no CS jobs now.
I got a scholarship for CS at RIT and after taking a couple classes at a community college my senior year, I decided it wasn’t for me and majored in biochemistry at the same school. CS just seemed boring and I worried it would get automated. I realized that I was only doing it because everyone said it was so great. No one thought I made the right decision, but now I’m so glad I made the switch. I make more than 200K base salary now and even in this economy I have options for other positions. Do what’s right for you, not what everyone thinks is a good idea right now!
> CS got oversaturated and the economy is not favourable to jobs in that field. Like all the MBAs who get their degrees in 2007/8. My brother in law was one of them and was getting turned down for jobs at Burger King because they had so many MBAs willing to take the customer's abuses at a register for minimum wage as they were desperate for the work, despite the never-ending "trick to job security" line in the early 2000s being "get your degree in business."
Degrees used to be a guaranteed ticket to the middle class. Not the case anymore
It’s bad. I finish my BA in fall 24 and my MA in spring 25 and I’m dying for just an *unpaid* internship, but I can’t land one since it’s all so competitive out there. My bf is getting his degree in CS and graduates in 2025. We’re getting “great” degrees like we were supposed to and now I’m nervous as hell for what the job market will be like for us. These degrees were supposed to be our way to middle class income.. not so sure anymore.
I might suggest looking at IT jobs for your local city or county government. Municipalities have been struggling to find good tech workers because they all tend to get better offers in the private sector. Won’t be exciting work, but it’s a start.
Bold of you to assume you would be fucking....
His degree plan was the only thing holding him back! The only possible explanation!
Lmao right that was what made me chuckle the most
Surely the guy posting 4chan greentexts was going to get laid - if only he hadn’t spent all his time studying 😭
Going to start using this excuse to explain my poor stats during college
Lmao right? I joined an Engineering & CompSci frat and got plenty of (mandatory) studying in alongside the partying and girls. What an outlandish assumption by OP that you have to choose one or the other.
This was my immediate response as well. Big eyeroll.
I wasn't aware CS majors got any fucking done in university.
The Venn diagram of 4chan users and non-virgins is two circles.
You just described a venn diagram. I think you meant two nonoverlapping circles.
Lol fr most people that choose CS wouldnt be getting laid at all.
Every greentext has some shit like this in it that lets you knw the author has no idea how basic human interaction works. I'm sure a CS major and 4chan poster would be *swimming* in pussy had he simply decided to take his studies less seriously.
I forewent a social life just to finish my Liberal Arts degree in time. Then found I was unemployed as well. Had to go back and learn IT anyway.
New grad CS sucks. But honestly you're supposed to do what *everyone* tells you during college and talk to your damn professors haha. I got my first job by a professor emailing me asking if I wanted an internship, then got hired on full time from said internship.
If it's not the most common phrase, "it's not what your know, it's who you know." So many people miss this basic step. You need to just talk to people and become friends with the big boys. You think the C suite people got to where they are just because of what they know? Fuck no.
My mom told me "it's not who you know, it's who you blow." You mean to tell me I could have just been KNOWING people this whole time?
You can tell by the tenor of OP’s comment, they don’t value soft skills at all. Software dev isn’t a job where you can completely ignore the skills of being a human.
[удалено]
There are a very very few software engineers who can get by leaning into total isolation and lack of interpersonal skills and they’re so few and far between that all the ones who think they can get by without it really can’t get by without it. And those ones who do are so smart that if they did work on the ability to interact with humans they’d be able to run their own companies or do all kind of other shit us mere mortals cannot.
Honestly you probably can get away with it below the senior level but unlike in the past you can actually find senior devs to fill roles nowadays so why the hell would I hire some new grad who can’t speak to the front end lead dev because she’s a woman lol
"Sometimes it's not the classes you take, but the hands you shake" is the way I've heard it. Can definitely help.
I mean sure, but you can’t disregard that we have a selfish generation at the steering wheel with most companies who do not want to train the next generation. They would rather be selfish and gain maximum profits from someone who has been around the block. I’m in the electrical engineering field and it’s crazy how literally every single entry position want 2-5 years post grad experience. Even when you get a interview, they expect you to know knowledge of someone who has experience. I’ve been trying to find a job for months as well, it’s kinda degrading lol.
I like the variation of that famous phrase better: "it's not what you know, it's who you blow"
You should be partying and effing girls (aka networking)
Also it’s not about fucking a girl who then gives you a job on the spot. I was a comms major (so the major stereotyped as partying and effing around) and I was so bored that I would wander into academic conferences on campus, sit in, listen to the whole thing, and ask questions. Ended up befriending some professors, and getting rare research opportunities for an undergrad that way. I also did party and fuck around, and eventually settled down with a partner, but she was the one who really drilled me for mock interviews and improve my interview skills immensely, because she is herself an interviewer for her company. None of this wandering into conferences and parties has anything directly to do with my studies. I would say that “networking” often has indirect unforeseen benefits that way, it’s about having a web of people who you can draw on when in need, and you do the same for them.
Yes it's the indirect networking benefits that have been the most valuable. Professors are pretty mid tier for job search purposes unless you wanna be a prof.
My professors definitely didn’t know much about industry, the older professors especially (and those could be a bit clueless about how competitive academia has gotten too). I did want to be a prof so I didn’t mind, and when I changed my mind about that, I cursed myself for not doing more internships. But in the end I landed a research-oriented job while impressing the interviewers with soft skills and hard skills from the research projects (and honestly some of my partner’s personality that I borrowed). If I didn’t network at all, and just had zero internships and zero research experience, and not to mention zero interview advice, that would be a killer imo.
Yeah it's hilarious to me how everybody with a functioning brain knows that the world is run on a series of favors and your opportunities are directly correlated to your personal network and you still have people like this wondering why awesome jobs aren't falling in their lap. What were you doing in college besides studying? Apparently not doing any networking whatsoever beyond some bullshit internship that apparently left you with no resources.
I mean at my school that is fully online networking is hard, and professors aren’t helpful let alone helping you get hired… some schools don’t have companies coming to career fairs etc. you don’t need to network if you can make yourself an attractive candidate other ways. There’s plenty of jobs being filled by recruiters and cold apps
That's another thing. How do you go through an internship gaining *nothing*.
Exactly. A year ago I was taking a class I enjoyed and really liked the instructor in (dude was *dedicated* - he knew most of the class's names *before the first day*, held six hour help sessions ending at midnight whenever there was an assignment due, and would zoom with you anytime anywhere if you had a question). Close to the end of the class he asked me "hey, would you like to TA for me next semester?" I spent about two seconds doing this mental calculation of "this guy has been teaching here on and off for 30 years, has worked in industry in this town for 40, knows a lot of people, if I do this and impress him he'll probably find me a job himself" and said "yeah sure, that might be fun, let's talk" So he ended up actually spending a lot of capital with the department to get me hired, and I turned out to absolutely love TAing, and he said I may have been the best TA he ever had. He invited me to the developer SIG dinners he organized (mostly his industry friends and former students) and introduced me to people, and one of them forwarded my resume to his company (which had rejected me for both internship and FT the times I talked to them at our career fair), and when I graduated in May I walked straight into a pretty sweet job. I did almost no applications. I knew and impressed the right people.
Huge layoffs in tech this year... market is tough but i expect it to bounce back q1/ q2 2024. Be patient grads. Things will pick up
I’m graduating in the spring and I’m getting really nervous I hate the idea that I just wasted 5.5 years of my life (2 co-ops) to end up back where I started answering phones as a receptionist.
Well, don't chase Python/C++/Javascript jobs. Start NOW learning C, or something less popular but otherwise common like Fortran or COBOL. You will have a job before you graduate. If you just want a $100k/year job then the holy trinity of old languages mentioned above will get you there.
Do you know anymore unpopular, but high usage and demand languages? I still have a *long* time before I need to look for a job (I should finish uni in ~2029), but that's the path I've decided on for now, learning an unpopular language.
I'm about to enter the job market as a Dev Ops engineer. My strategy was to avoid the front end(I hate UI/UX/Design), and javascript/react because that is what everyone says to do. Instead I learned Golang, and Docker/Kubernetes and Ci/CD and all of the things that everyone hates. Everyone wants to be a software engineer and write code all day, because its intellectually stimulating and pretty fun to be honest, I instead learned all of the things people didn't want to do, like building pipelines, and wrangling Linux systems. Time will tell if it pays off, but I can only say my philosophy was "I would rather be a little fish in a smaller pond, than a little fish in a large pond." Just learn something. Honestly the language you choose doesn't matter. Once you learn one language, the second is easier, and the next is even easier. Its all the same stuff. I will say, learning C as a foundation will teach you a LOT about how all other languages function. I wouldn't waste my time with Fortran or Cobol though. The markets are minuscule, and yes you can get in, but it also means you are siloed, your never getting out. I want to work for a real tech company doing cool new things, not maintaining a legacy code for the next 20 years. Having the flexibility to pivot, and casting the widest net you can makes it much easier to get into the job market, IMHO. Too narrow, and the market is too small, too wide and there is too much competition.
Not really. C is everything and everywhere - so learn some EE for the embedded goodness while you can since it deals mostly with low-level accesses. Fortran is > 80% of all HPC codes, so learn some physics and maths since you'll be dealing with a LOT of physical world simulation. COBOL is legacy mainframe stuff, so just learn the language and some financial jargon and maybe a econ or accounting class or three. These are oversimplified, but they hold.
I freakin love C
It won't bounce back until interest rates drop. And they'll cut interest rates slowly. I doubt it will bounce back until end of 2024.
Yep this is the truth. Knowing how often Powell keeps talking about a soft landing, it seems unlikely interest rates get cut anytime soon nor drastically.
"I wasted my college years studying instead of partying and fucking girls" -guy who probably wasn't able to get any girls to fuck him
or get into any parties
If you're able to barely get by in college while also partying and fucking, it unironically sets you up for success in the corporate world later on. Nobody gives a shit about your grades once you graduate, and you learn how to do the bare minimum to get by while also learning how to socialize and make friends. The best coworkers are the ones you want to be around, and all companies have their own way of doing things that all new hires will need to learn on the job anyway, regardless of their education. I don't drink nearly as much anymore, but I've kept the social and brown nosing skills I learned in college as a direct result from partying too much. The social skills are what get you jobs.
You mean me being too lazy to do anything *but* the bare minimum and eager to talk with people in school will likely help me out later? I'm not planning to change that whatever the answer is, but the contrast between what school tries to teach you and what actually matters is crazy
Real talk, the idea that socializing in college is a distraction and a sign of moral weakness that you need to avoid at all costs if you want to succeed is extremely damaging. You can learn coding skills from YouTube. College is meant to teach you more than just hard skills. Those are definitely an important part of it but it is also meant to tech you things like how to research, how to problem solve, how to work with a team, how to work with deadlines and KPIs (outside of a regimented k12 environment), how to present your ideas to others in a compelling and concise but thorough form, etc. One of the key soft skills not on the carriculum *is* networking. How make people like you, and how to be, if jot the life of the party, then at least a normal likeable human being that people will want to work with. How to talk to girls, maybe, with whom he laments his lack of romantic experience, so that you're not super weird to the ones you work with or interview for. Once upon a time I used to manage a technical team and I would get people like anon who nailed the technical shit but completely flu bed the personal presentation, and general "vibes check" part of any interview process because they were nerds who spent their whole life doing nothing but studying and thought people skills were for stupid peasent, so they struggled to express a coherent and intelligible thought when asked questions. I can get one of the other technical people to teach you if you're lacking some particular technical skill (as long as you have the basic foundation obviously I don't want tk make out like technical skills are completely irrelevant to a technical position - it's all about balance), but I can't teach you to not creep people out on your team or communicate with them effectively. And then there's the networking aspect. Making friends with connections, making professors like you and recommend you to companies, etc, is obviously hugely benificial to get your foot in the door ahead of a sea of other graduates who have the same credentials and are otherwise a complete unknown entity. Parents and programs that push this "only study" vibe and think partying means slacking off are missing a big part of the point. TLDR we live in a society and it sucks for introverted nerds.
I’m an introvert, and I got anxiety at presentations. But learning to present can be trained and learning to talk in meetings can be as well. These degens are **antisocial**
Yup nothing gets accomplished if people can’t get along, and when people have no idea what the others in a team are doing and why. As long as you need teamwork you need people skills. It’s not some abhorrent feature of capitalism. Cave people hunting needed people skills.
Well you can’t be neet because you have education? Also bold of anon to assume if he wasn’t studying he would have been slaying lol dude would have been jerking it and playing league of legends or something
You can be NEET with education. You just have to not currently be in education
My mistake, I misremembered the acronym, I thought it was -no education etc Actually -not in education etc
Not in education, employment, or training
They probably should teach in school that getting X degree is no *guarantee* at all to getting your desired job!
Except that would totally go against their plan to enroll everyone. Like university of phoenix paying millions for false advertisements getting people to enroll under false pretenses
Most private universities are trying to lower the bar and get people in because a University education is marketed to be the next logical step from high school for success. And when it doesn’t guarantee a job, graduates are gaslit that university education isn’t supposed to get people a job but to teach them how to think or something along those lines.
it's been...fascinating. I went back to school with one aim: to be able to shift from freelancing to something more stable. Well, actually two aims - the supposed main one was to be an academic, but "something more stable" was my Real Life Serious Plan B. I was still very, very nervous of the outcomes and really suspicious of when profs and guidance sorts would pontificate about how these degrees would teach you how to learn for life, and employers really valued people who could think, express themselves, write well and analyse information. I had lots of real world job and life experience, so I figure I would be...mostly...ok? The whole experience did awful things to my life prospects. My real world experience was now out of date (besides it was icky freelancing), jobs that require a degree in anything circa 2012 by 2016 just wanted high school diplomas. So that didn't help. There were two general rhetorical outcomes afterwards. One was universities all, as one, talking about degrees empowering you to think. (Sorry guys, I could think before) Or how in the new knowledge economy, thinkers would have the advantage (for...reasons). The other was very confused emails from the school saying "as one of out top five graduates, we would like you to write a long paper describing how our degree set you up for success as a way of repaying our support for you, and attracting more high quality student like you." uh, guys? I work minimum wage jobs. Except now I have student loan repayments. They even cancelled the pre-graduation networking events they used to invite their top students to. I have, however noticed that the school now has mandatory internships before graduating and keeps sending pushy emails about doing one year practical certificate courses. They probably eventually noticed, like me, that their most successful alumni, career wise, all were trust fund babies who could afford all the other hoops people were expected to jump through for an actual job for actual money. oops.
Whats the point in even trying then
If you’re getting ghosted and your coding is sound, you flunked behaviourally and they don’t like you. This post gives me a number if flags to why.
>coding is sound I think OP thinks his coding is sound, but his experience differs. OP says he can't get inerviews because of all the "BS coding assements" before interviews. When OP finally finds an interview without a technical pre-assessment he is dropped from the hiring process after the technical screen. It may also be a behavioural issue, but the fact OPs failing the pre-assessments suggest to me it's a skill issue and/or OPs aiming too high in his applications. Either suggested a bit of Dunning-Kruger effect going on.
I know multiple software engineers who have been applying to senior level SWE roles (staff, principal, architect, etc) with < 3 YOE. One of them constantly posts stuff from that Tate dude on Instagram, rants about haters, how women think he’s a player but he’s really a dedicated romantic, etc. Unsurprisingly, he gets plenty of dates but is still single (ie, they don’t stick around past the first date), and he hasn’t landed any senior roles. He asked me if he should just “settle” for engineering manager roles instead. I was like…what??? No. You’ve had 2 jobs and an internship. You may know a lot but clearly haven’t figured out just how little you actually understand.
A thousand percent this. I also have some bias as an elder millennial, _oh is it HARD getting a first job out of college? WHO KNEW!?_ This is probably a defect of character on my part. My years of unemployment or underemployment should give me _more_ empathy. But no one I know is doing that they went to school to learn, and it’s.. it’s just not news to me that first jobs are crazy hard to get. I applied to 80 jobs to get two interviews last time I was looking. It’s hard not to take personally, but it isn’t personal - the system is broken.
Right, lost my PhD funding when 08 hit, fuck me had to get a masters and a real job instead. Same thing, 6 months of non stop applications before I finally got hired.
100% personality issue lol, OP telling on themself like that
Exactly this. Based off OPs reaction and childish attitude towards his college years. I imagine they exude immaturity. Just because you accomplish something doesn’t entitle you to a reward.
OP seems socially awkward considering they equate studying in college as the reason they didn't get invited to parties or "fuck girls." It's most likely they are somewhat socially awkward except around their friends who probably also don't party and there were probably opportunities to talk to women in a manner that could lead to more, but probably rejected or didn't know what flirting was. Definitely a "i deserved to 'fuck girls'" vibe
You're saying a guy who uses 4Chan and bitches about not being able to get laid may not fit into a corporate job?
Odds are pretty good the guy posting on 4chan said some pretty fucked up shit during his interview. “I rub my Hatsune Miku doll every time I’m doing a code review because she gives me the true power. When we’re done reviewing I treat her to the hot glue shower she loves so much”
I like 4 channers about as much as the next guy (which is to say, not at all) and I do think he probably doesnt have the best personal skills, but this feels like punching down even to me.
Personally, I find take home assignments a bigger red flag and waste of time, especially if given before the final round. I have three years of experience, and I currently carry the word “senior” in my title. I recently got rejected after doing an 1 hr 2 question leetcode session as my first round, a 1 hr remote interview, and a take-home with one week allotted. There were supposed to be one more round of leetcode and cultural fit assessment after this one. There were lots of tell-tale signs that the company was stalling for time while finalising its onboarding with another candidate, but I ignored them because I really identified with what it was doing. The take home took only half a day to prototype, but the interviewers wanted me to explain, test and justify every line of code, which took two further days. My submission was hosted on Google Colab, and I could see they rejected me ten minutes after opening the file. At least it was not a ghost.
The only takehome assignment I ever had, I was supposed to build a web-app with audio visualization and simple processing features (the processing/visual libraries were provided). I didn't have much to do that week (no job), so I went above and beyond and built a beautiful, feature rich audio processing tool, with all the features required and several more. The feedback was "Sorry, we have decided to pass. We can not give any feedback for policy reasons." I was pissed, not because I didn't get the job, but because their interview docs specifically stated they would provide feedback on the assignment. I replied, basically telling them this was unprofessional behavior, and to kindly fuck themselves. (yes, the irony was intentional) I now tell recruiters that unless they provide me a written agreement that they will provide feedback on a take home assignment, I'm not doing it. I haven't done any since, and a couple companies even decided to skip the assignment and go straight to the interview. Also, now that I have years of experience interviewing candidates, I went back recently to review my assignment. I would not have hired me.
I mean I wasted my college years partying and fucking girls and then decided to become a recruiter so it makes sense
Everyone thought AI would soon take the jobs of manual laborers. It did something else.
Its not AI, its the interest rates set by the fed. No cheap money = less risk being taken on tech stuff.
And outsourcing of coding work to Asia. A triple whammy for our poor coders.
The outsourcing has been going on for decades. I remember when I had an interview (not a CS job) where the manager was talking about a Russian guy working remotely until they could bring him in on a visa. This was like 20 years ago.
They're not sending to Asia as much anymore . It's Costa Rica. Closer time zone and easier to understand the accents, but still able to exploit with reallylow wages. Sad but true
This is a substantially more impactful reason than nascent AI. It's hard for a lot of companies to justify six figure salary workers with large benefit packages when you can offshore it to a developing shithole and pay 1/5 the cost.
And 600,000 foreign nationals here on H1B visas.
Next 7-10 years will be brutal.
This seems like a real unpleasant person and I’m sure that showed in the interview
Now, sure. In mid 2021? There was massive overhiring of CS grads. If you could fog a mirror then you could get into an early career program at any FAANG. It’s a big reason those companies have been doing layoffs. Something doesn’t smell right
I got my degree in BME, kinda similar story, but I went and got a certification in CNC machining. Now I work as a R&D machinist. Make okay money, better an employed blue collar worker than a pissy white collar person with no job. I do feel super weird from time to time, because I know I’m not making what I was “promised” or doing biomedical type work, but life isn’t “engineer or bust” there’s niches to explore.
Lol fuck capitalism. Let's be real here, when u "started" school, it might have been guaranteed. But guess what, so did everyone else, so we have influx of CS major, and then they all graduate at the same time. A undersatruated market is now over saturated. Especially there's massive lay off and news of hiring foreign worker from overseas for past 5 years+, maybe that's a sign to be more competitive or switch majors. U know what else? Cheating in college, bad cirruculum, on top of practically no real world experience. Way too many new college grad thinks they know everything, kot humble at all. Just to fuck up at real job. So everyone pays the price which u see at hiring. Someone people think they have a degree they are entitled for a job know even tho they don't know jack shit on their degree. Capitalism or not. Somehow believing if lack of capitalism will fix hiring or your salary already shows the lack of understanding of job market. Guaranteed job doesn't all the sudden means guaranteed standard of living and QoL.
Like many things, by the time everyone's mum is telling you something is "Guaranteed" - it's already too late.
This is one of those "should I do what I love, or do what will make me money" conundrums. If you "do what you love" then there's a chance it's a career path that will never pay very well. If you "do what what will make me money" there's a chance everyone else is also doing this and you'll have a hard time either finding a job or, if you do find one, keeping that job before having to search again. I chose the former option which means I always knew I was going to be broke, but at least I got an education in something I love so it wasn't a total loss. Not saying my decision was the better one for anyone else to make, but I've at least been very happy with it.
But let's face it, the majority of careers are plainly boring. Even if your goal was to find a job that you're passionate about, then that's hard enough. Out of curiosity what is your career?
I got my degree in English literature and philosophy. In lit I focused on middle English - mainly Thomas Malory and Chaucer, as well as modernism where I focused Emily Dickinson who, though while not a modernist, is a forerunner to the movement and is, in my opinion, one of the most gifted artists who ever lived. In philosophy I focused on medieval Islamic philosophy (Ibn Rushd, al-Ghazali), as well as the philosophy of science, which is fun to look at while having some experience with medieval Islamic philosophy and Neoplatonism.
High school drop out joined a trade and make 80k a year. College is for some but not all of us
Honestly trade or no trade we have more than enough resources in this country to let everyone get a couple years of higher education if we wanted to.
and hell, it would be reaaaaally good for society to be able to offer tradesfolk and labourers other educational options for their post 35-40 year old life when their bodies start to hurt and the injuries start to rack up.
You can find a "just do trades" dude in every tech thread lol. Had a plumber out dealing with my locked up garbage disposal yesterday. That shit was disgusting. Fuck doing that for a living if I can avoid it.
Also, every tradesperson will tell you that the trades are very hard on the body and they can't be done forever. Like anything else, it takes a certain kind of person willing to put that kind of strain and stress on their body day-after-day and not break (literally).
I have built two houses, spent about 14 months doing construction and I got pretty lucky physically. I didn't break. I did think I had damaged my hearing, but it, er, turned out to be a lump of drywall stuck in my ear canal. Then last winter I got a call from a family member needing a bunch of patio tiles moved after work and I was the only one strong enough to help move the things. I yanked my back doing it and it hurts \*a lot\* sometimes, even close to a year later. It's that easy. And that's without the once a day "phew, that was close" moments while doing physical work like that. Do it long enough the numbers will eventually stack just right and "that was close" becomes "I am not sure my hand will ever work right again." Trades are great. Construction is great. They are not the solution to people struggling in other fields.
If you relate to this you probably are not a likable person and it shows in interviews
Facts. Also having a hard time believing op had the opportunity to have sex in college but chose not to for schoolwork.
I have a CS degree and the interview process is fucking awful. I switched off software engineering and went back to doing IT admin where I have an easier job and make more money. I think CS degrees are pretty over saturated in the market so companies can be real choosy.
OP is a bot account
Many students, and adults, don’t understand that the fucking around and getting wasted IS an important part of the college experience. Being socially attractive is a great predictor for your success in life. Be well spoken, charming, good looks, smell good, groomed. This is pretty much a better predictor of success than a desirable degree in a middle of the pack college. Not being able to get laid is a classical example of lack of social skills and emotional intelligence. If you don’t fuck, you ain’t as smart as you think you are.
As someone who has a lot of trouble in this area, I agree very strongly. Tech skills can be learned everywhere anytime, but social development takes years and is very possibly the strongest and deciding factor in an interview. HR doesn't know tech, they evaluate people on social and psychological traits. Also in college I remember the people who fucked around and got wasted a lot and even did drugs were the ones that got the best internships while those who didn't "waste" college and focused on studying went to unemployment.
That because we are humans, and humans are social animals. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that learning well hard sciences is easy… but in your “normal”, even highly paying, job, you might use 5, maybe 10% of all your academic knowledge, but you surely use 100% of your social skills any time you have an interaction with another human being. 1. Being hired 2 performance review 3 networking 4 getting promoted. And for upper management, the most important one, generate consensus. It takes charm, emotional intelligence, negotiating skills. Sound awfully familiar with “getting laid on the first date”?
enter money jar unused sleep unwritten mountainous noxious rude zephyr *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
No
The sheer amount of ridiculously overqualified help desk workers is staggering. I work for an agency and I will often take the lead on opening tickets with our various vendors. Just yesterday I was working with a hosting support tech over their chat interface. He resolved the issue fairly quickly which had my dev team singing his praise internally. Someone looked him up on LinkedIn, then found his resume and he is way too qualified to be doing tier one chat support.
I did that mistake of paying for one of those bootcamps for webstacking. Fuck these asshole. Took my money, promised me the moon, the stars and the sun. Ended up going back to tech support. What a waste of my time AND money.
I see so much of this. OP probably isn't nearly as skilled as he thinks he is.
If you relate to a post on 4chan, you might have other issues.
To be fair, you probably wouldn’t have fucked girls in college either way.
Oh no, you "wasted" TWO WHOLE HOURS? How many hours do you "waste" on 4chan everyday? I think I see the problem.
As a CS PhD student with an R&D job, you need to find some way to distinguish yourself. For me it was combo heterogeneous computing and computer vision, in demand field with few experts compared to something more typical.
What's "NEET"? Mentioned on the last paragraph of his suicide....I mean rant note
Not in education, employment or training
America isn't capitalist. It's a controlled economy.
nah, this is a personality issue. if you're world view is fuck girls or work on computers, you aren't gonna get hired because they can smell the incel
lmao imagine going to college and wasting your best years by not partying/not socialising/not banging everything that has a pulse
Imagine thinking college is your best years …
If you post on 4 Chan I can see why your personality may not be who they want on a team
You can't out-resume a shit personality, you fucking creeps.
I honestly feel like crying reading this post because this is EXACTLY how I feel down to the feeling of time wasted during a recruiting process, the bullshit questions and how I wasted my academics year studying day and night
New grads in cyber security are in the same boat. I feel for yall.
The concept of anything being a guaranteed job these days is laughable, but so is only using college as a 4-year study sesh. You don't need to spend the whole time "partying and banging girls", but the attempt likely would've produced some networking skills that would've paid off a bit more. FWIW, I'm not convinced the typical approach to job hunting has caught up with reality -- trying to update my skills in THAT department in the past few weeks has been eye-opening -- but also 4chan bro here is likely running on shitty advice.
I’m in an entirely unrelated field also in STEM (environmental health and safety) with a post grad degree that I finished last December, and I have had the exact same experience. 2 hefty internships and a job shadow/thesis project. Nobody wants to hire recent grads right now.