
Darpa: US Geek Shortage Is National Security Risk - coderdude
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/darpa-us-geek-shortage-is-a-national-security-risk/
======
econo_girl
I think this really comes down to basic economics. Talking about a "shortage"
of something is equivalent to saying the market isn't clearing: that there's
more demand than supply. And having more demand than supply is equivalent to
the price being too low. Salaries for developers, inflation-adjusted, have
remained essentially the same since the dot-com boom. Meanwhile, salaries for
bankers and consultants and lawyers have exploded. The results of this should
be obvious.

You guys want people to major in computer science? Pay them to. I'm sure that
the DoD and Google and Microsoft would all like to hire top people for $50,000
a year. But that isn't the way markets work. If I want a Ferrari, I can't
refuse to pay more than $10,000, and then complain about a "Ferrari shortage"
because no one will sell me one at that price.

~~~
mattdeboard
There's an implicit "smart & passionate" qualifier on the title of the
article. There's a shortage of smart and passionate geeks. It's not about
cramming more people into the Computer Science pipeline. That will make
absolutely no impact on the actual problem.

~~~
econo_girl
The principles of supply and demand apply just as much to the market for
"smart and passionate labor" as "all labor". If demand exceeds supply, the
price is too low.

Even if you assumed that the ability to program was purely the result of some
genetic mutation, so that there were X programmers in the world and there
could never ever be any more, there _still_ wouldn't be a shortage if prices
rose enough - because there would be less demand. If each programmer had to be
paid twice as much, companies would hire fewer programmers, and there wouldn't
be a shortage.

~~~
mattdeboard
I was mainly responding to the, "Pay people to go to college for CS"
statement.

My point: Disqus has been hiring for QUITE a while, very vigorously. I know
for certain they are getting a ton of applications. I'm really quite sure
they're offering market value for the kind of talent they're looking for. So,
what's the problem?

I'd wager they're having trouble finding people talented enough and who make a
good culture fit.

Then again, when I think programming I don't think cubicle-wage-slave cranking
out Java or something. I guess you could quadruple the number of code monkeys
in the world to fill all THOSE positions. I wouldn't want to work with the
people who came out of that factory, though.

~~~
invalidOrTaken
Aren't they _by definition_ not offering market value if they're having a hard
time finding people?

~~~
mattdeboard
No.

------
sp_
German, Romanian, Vietnamese-American (1st generation immigrant), Chinese-
American (1st generation immigrant), Spanish, Iranian, French, Australian,
South African, Indian, British, Russian. What's that? The nationalities of the
people who sit in my hallway in the computer security department of one of the
biggest software companies in the United States. OK, admittedly there also
four or five true red-blooded Americans in the hallway but they are definitely
a small minority.

We are absolutely feeling the lack of US geeks. They are rare enough in
software development but even rarer in computer security. We have several open
positions but it's mostly non-Americans who apply. We are basically excited
about every application from a US citizen we get. This makes hiring much
easier and we do not have to wait until October 1st when the new H-1B visa
period kicks in.

Now, I have speculated that maybe the company I work for is just unpopular
with US citizens but then I recently interviewed with a Bay Area company with
a much sexier public image and it's even worse there. I talked to members of a
team of 12 people. 11 of them were not Americans.

In fact, we spent the lunch interview speculating about the causes of this
situation. In the end we considered it most likely that the title of engineer
is simply not sexy in the United States. In other parts of the world like some
countries in Europe and especially Asia the job title of engineer carries a
good amount of social respect and commands a respectable salary. That is not
the case in the United States (well, the salary is actually good, but not the
reputation) where the reputation ladder is topped by jobs like doctor or
lawyer. It is not surprising that the smartest students would rather get into
those jobs.

Anyway, in the light of all this I keep being amused that the US three-letter
agencies are advertising their computer security positions so aggressively.
With the current US talent I am seeing in the wild there is no way they will
be able to fill these positions in any way that can compete with, say, the
Chinese hacker legions. Rather, I foresee national interest waiver greencards
for people like those in my hallway.

~~~
cynest
> That is not the case in the United States ... where the reputation ladder is
> topped by jobs like doctor or lawyer

That would be a sample of environments where higher education is strongly
pushed. In the area I grew up in, the amount parents spent pushing their kids
to excel in athletics above anything else is stupid. I know a 6th-grade
teacher who complains about kids not having any time for homework because they
participate in non-school sports.

~~~
Derbasti
Are you saying that engineering does not require higher education in the US?
It sure does in Europe...

~~~
xiaoma
It requires education, but not necessarily schooling.

My friend's father worked on some later Apollo missions and ended up leading a
Titan engineering group with no college degree. He was a damned good engineer,
though. If it were possible to earn mathematics degrees by test taking, he'd
easily have had a graduate degree.

In the beginning he was a technician (which didn't require a degree), and once
during crunch time he literally fixed a buggy electrical component an engineer
was showing to his boss in front of his eyes. In his words after that one
lucky break, he never looked back and just kept working his way up, excelling
and proving himself in each position. After a point, the fact that he had no
degree made his managers take _more_ notice of him. Clearly a man who had to
work his way up through several levels he wasn't supposed to be eligible for
had something unique.

It's difficult, especially in the defense industry, but sometimes talent wins
out over credentials.

~~~
Derbasti
Funny. That is totally different in Europe. Engineering very much requires
higher education, which definitely includes at least a basic understanding of
business, economics, law etc. and of course good knowledge of physics,
mathematics and deep insight in some engineering field. This is usually taught
as a bachelor's degree. (Bachelor of Engineering)

That said, there are some able men and women who carry out engineering jobs
without a degree (even though IIRC they can not call themselves engineers)

~~~
xiaoma
I think maybe you misread my comment. He had an _excellent_ education, across
the board. It wasn't attained through formal schooling.

------
foob
One of the things that made the US so strong in the last century was the
influx of great scientists from Europe during the world wars. I know many
brilliant people from other countries today who would love to become US
citizens but in some cases it is difficult for them to even secure visas. Our
academic culture might still be preferable to that in many other countries but
if we continue to let it decay this won't be the case for long. I think that
it would help solve the problem the article addresses and carry countless
other benefits if we made citizenship very easy to obtain for people with
intelligence that is far above average. Even some rule like any foreign
national who graduated from college in the US in the top 5% of their class
automatic gets the option of US citizenship would have a profoundly positive
impact. It's just baffling to me that we close our borders to people who would
clearly improve our country.

~~~
NY_USA_Hacker
Our academic system, especially in the research universities, is just fine.
Nearly all the world's best research universities are in the US. Why? After
WWII the US War Department concluded that math, science, and engineering were
crucial for US national security, Since then Congress, via the NSF and NIH,
fund the research universities well enough to make them lead the world.
There's no problem with our research universities.

The supply of labor for software is a very different issue.

------
pnathan
I suggest working to deprecate the glorification of sports stars, actors, rock
musicians, and other careers that don't contribute to the advancement of
humanity.

Demonstrate the wonders of STEM fields, and do so in a non-hokey manner (I've
_seen_ the government ads and the ACM ads, they are terrible).

Instead of bubble-heads on the evening news, work to have thoughtful people
providing the voice of the country. Work to have authorities in those fields
providing discussion and commentary.

Work to raise the national mind past football, movies and booze and towards
deeper understanding and discussion of real issues.

I believe that with an increase in the average thought level, we will suddenly
find more geeks in our midst.

~~~
danenania
"I suggest working to deprecate the glorification of sports stars, actors,
rock musicians, and other careers that don't contribute to the advancement of
humanity."

Programming and computer science are important, but there's no need to
belittle other professions. All the careers you listed require skill and
dedication and contribute to the advancement of humanity in their own ways. I
agree it's always good to raise the general level of thought and knowledge,
but there are plenty of intelligent people who enjoy football, movies, music,
and even _gasp_ booze.

~~~
pyre
The point being that kids are growing up in a culture that puts _more_
importance on becoming a celebrity in the entertainment business than on the
task of increasing the breadth and depth of human knowledge.

------
lawtguy
I think there's three reasons that there's a shortage of U.S. CS graduates:

1) Dot-com bust: Lots of people jumped into CS when it looked like being a
programmer was a easy way to become a millionaire. When it became obvious that
wasn't going to happen for most CS graduates and there was a glut of talent in
the market, people switched to something else.

2) Outsourcing: Right on top of the dot-com bust was the trend towards
outsourcing. There was lots of scary noise about how programmers were the next
factory workers: gone overseas and never coming back.

3) H1-Bs: They hurt the supply of U.S. CS students by making wages lower which
makes CS a less attractive major. (For the record, I'm pro immigration, but
anti-H1-B. H1-B workers have very little ability to negotiate salary and
companies like Tata abuse the H1-B system).

Issues #1 and #2 have more or less worked themselves out, so you'd expect that
the current shortage will end as people start seeing CS as a good option
again.

~~~
tsotha
_H1-Bs: They hurt the supply of U.S. CS students by making wages lower which
makes CS a less attractive major. (For the record, I'm pro immigration, but
anti-H1-B. H1-B workers have very little ability to negotiate salary and
companies like Tata abuse the H1-B system)._

I won't take any government blather about the lack of native-born engineers
seriously until this is addressed. What kid in his right mind is going to go
into a field in which the government undermines his ability to get a raise?

------
adamdecaf
Question: Who wants to work for a government that locks up its citizens for
using TrueCrypt or exploring around, as the hackers they have now grew up? It
seems to me that they have cut off their "user base" from the very thing it
requires to exist.

~~~
pnathan
That is true. But without knowledgable people in their midst, who will educate
them about the electronic frontier?

This is why the EFF came into being in the early 90s.

Here's a link to Sterling's book, the Hacker Crackdown[1]. He talks about the
early, early EFF. It really reminds me of today.

[1] <http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html>

------
rdouble
They are operating on obsolete data. CS enrollment has been on an upswing
since 2009.

This topic reveals a bit of confusion within the industry. On one hand there's
a commonly held belief that anyone outside of the top 1% of developers is next
to worthless as an employee. Yet when articles like this come out suggesting a
huge shortage of home-grown nerds, everyone agrees that "something must be
done" and kids must be guided towards math and CS classes...

~~~
georgieporgie
It's government employees trying to pad their resume by spearheading programs
along with industry types trying to get labor as cheaply as possible.

------
jfoutz
There is no geek shortage. there's a shortage of people who are willing to let
the FBI tap their phones, work on computers not connected to the internet, or
take frequent random drug tests.

Fed jobs suck.

~~~
pagekalisedown
Fed interviews suck too. Drug tests, polygraph tests (which we know is bogus
science), months and months of waiting, just to be turned down.

I think Google's the only company with a worst interview process.. "Come
interview for a job, which we'll offer you 5 months down the road. No, we
can't tell you what you'll work on until after you've started working for us."

------
forensic
The amount of skill, devotion and intelligence it takes to be a geek is far
higher than the rewards, especially when you take into account stuff like
prestige. Even well paid geeks like Zuckerberg are treated in a condescending
way.

Without a lot of intrinsic motivation, first worlders don't become geeks.
There are major issues with prestige, image, lifestyle, pay, hours, lack of
professional associations, lack of government influence, lack of sex appeal.

------
demian
"Interest in Computer Science has grown in resent years"

[http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/06/11/technology/11...](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/06/11/technology/11computing-
graph/11computing-graph-articleInline-v2.jpg)

from

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/11/technology/11computing.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/11/technology/11computing.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1&ref=collegesanduniversities)

------
ww520
It really is simple economic at work here. When lawyers, doctors, investment
bankers, or managers got paid much higher than engineers, why would smart
native born Americans want to be engineers? Engineers are populated with smart
people who don't have verbal fluency in English, i.e. smart first generation
immigrants or smart foreigners.

~~~
cbailey
If these people really thought about it, they would see that the market is
flooded with lawyers and screaming for quality engineers of all kinds. I know
this because my wife is in law school and the law schools are admitting and
churning out more lawyers than ever despite many law jobs dissolving into thin
air.

------
tokenadult
The article reports, "The agency doesn’t offer specifics on what kinds of
activities might boost computing’s appeal to teens, but they want programs to
include career days, mentoring, lab tours and counseling."

Career days, mentoring, lab tours, and counseling are all surely good ideas.
But building up desire to become a computer geek among teens will only go so
far unless the teens have enough background coming out of high school to learn
the actual skills of a computer geek.

Currently, the ACT college admission testing organization estimates that
three-fourths of the young men and women entering colleges "were not
adequately prepared academically for first-year college courses."

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230407010457639...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304070104576399532217616502.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)

There are varying amounts of mathematical background strictly necessary for
working in various kinds of programming jobs. It would be a rare programming
job that wouldn't require at least as much solid skill in mathematics as
implied by completing a second year of secondary school algebra. But a lot of
high school graduates don't reach that level of math skill, even if they have
taken an algebra II course.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/requiring-
alg...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/requiring-algebra-ii-
in-high-school-gains-momentum-nationwide/2011/04/01/AF7FBWXC_story.html)

[http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/cccr10/pdf/Conditio...](http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/cccr10/pdf/ConditionofCollegeandCareerReadiness2010.pdf)

I've given more citations to studies of United States mathematics education in
another HN post,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2562743>

so I won't belabor that point here. I'll simply point out that with students
who have decent math skills in shortage already, moving math-able students
into computer science or computer engineering but from physics or medicine or
other forms of engineering still leaves the United States with a potential
national security problem.

------
aorshan
As a college student, I think the best way to get people my age motivated to
become geeks and get into computer programming is to show them how cool it can
be as well as how it can result in being successful. Students need to see how
cool it is to be involved in the tech startup community. The Social Network
movie did a great job of showcasing this, but I think it needs to be taken
further. Essentially we need to work on turning tech companies and their
founders into celebrities in the same way that sports teams and their players
are.

Also I think we need to change how people are exposed to programming. For many
people, the phrase "I'll explain how this works later" is highly discouraging.
As such when the first language they are exposed to is a C variant, they tend
to be immediately turned off. Languages like Python should be the base of
programming education as they provide the ease of use that can excite new
users, while still providing the foundations necessary to learn more complex
languages. Also, when learning a language students should really be shown what
they can do with the tools they are learning. For example I was in an
introductory class and the teacher taught what a class was, but not how we
could use it for anything.

~~~
demian
Also as a college student, I think that the hole "geek" stuff should be
dropped. We need to aspire to be engineers, scientists, businessman, artists,
makers... not "geeks".

------
programminggeek
I think that part of the problem is in how geeks are trained and what they
work on. For example, think of all the software people go go to school, learn
java, and then build big ugly enterprise bank, insurance, whatever software
inside some megacorp that nobody cares about. Most end users of said software
don't like it and have zero appreciation for the people who made it.

Outside of Silicon Valley being a geek isn't cool, being a geek just means
that you're seen as tech support to friends and family. They appreciate it,
but it's not like you're a doctor or a lawyer or pro athlete or something.

Also, not only do a lot of the jobs for developers kind of suck, the things we
expect from geeks is horribly standardized. For example, outside of the
startup community you have 3 primary camps - PHP, Java, and .NET. I think most
jobs I've seen want developers who are stuck in one of those three camps and
have lots of experience there so that they build more standard software on
standard platforms.

Even PG wrote about that very phenomenon when he talked about how you didn't
have to worry about a competitor whose job listings wanted Oracle. I see more
job listings for PHP/JavaEE/.NET coders in a week than I've seen for
Rails/Python/Lisp/Scala/Clojure in a year.

If we are turning developers into PHP/.NET/JavaEE glue coders I kind of doubt
that young geeks would look up to us either. It's hard to be a uber geek when
all you know is Java from college CS course and Java EE in your full time job.
It's hard to make other people want to turn into uber geeks when they see
their parents or friends' parents having boring corporate tech jobs they don't
enjoy any more than the accountants or secretaries or managers do.

If as geeks we want more geeks, we have to do more super cool geeky stuff
instead of being so dreadfully boring.

We need to do more things that are "magic" like iPhone, Facebook, Kinect, and
StumbleUpon(which has become bizarrely popular on college campuses I've
noticed) and less things that are super lame like building horrid software
that people loathe using - Lotus Notes, SAP, etc...

Since when does programming have to feel like double entry accounting? Since
when should the hiring process and the training process feel much the same as
accounting or banking?

Geeks have gone from being seen as wizards to being seen as technical bean
counters and paper pushers.

~~~
mindcrime
_For example, think of all the software people go go to school, learn java,
and then build big ugly enterprise bank, insurance, whatever software inside
some megacorp that nobody cares about._

For what it's worth, nothing requires Enterprise software to be big, ugly,
boring, hard to use, etc. Maybe I'm biased, since I'm working on an Enterprise
Software startup, but I think this stuff can be damn interesting. Then again,
I'm in the "Enterprise 2.0" space, and am working with interesting stuff like
social network analysis, activity streams, machine learning, text mining,
semantic web tech, etc. Maybe writing accounting software _is_ boring, but the
stuff we're doing has a lot of interesting aspects to it, IMHO.

~~~
blrs
This definitely seems interesting. Are you guys hiring?

~~~
mindcrime
Not in the sense of looking for "employees", no. Looking for (a) co-
founder(s), yes. A co-founder would need to be (or be able/willing to re-
locate to) somewhere pretty close to Raleigh/Durham, NC. If you're interested,
shoot me an email.

Note that this is still in self-funded, bootstrap", "nights and weekends"
mode. :-)

------
chrisbennet
Franky, I don't believe there is a shortage of engineers.

A true shortage in the market (relative to demand) is accompanied by a rise in
salaries. In certain niche markets we _are_ seeing that [google's big raises,
etc] but I don't believe that market has much in common with the market that
DARPA cares about i.e. making new and better ways to <strike>kill
people</strike> defend the country.

Are the DeathTech and Skynets of the world start offering much higher salaries
during this "shortage"?

------
house345
Obviously, finding good people to hire is not easy. Many US government
agencies and contracting companies need "cleared" US citizens. Waiting several
months for the clearance process is sometimes not an option. I know one
employer right now who is offering $1000 to employees for every person they
bring in to interview. The interview candidates must have an active US
government security clearance.

------
lispm
My impression is that there are already way too many people working for the
military industrial complex.

It would be much better if the US would scale down their oversized military
and then it also might consider working on goods that advance the life of
people and which might actually be interesting to others so they can be sold.

The military jobs is actually one reason the US lacks competitiveness in some
areas (see the huge trade deficit). This works so: getting rich is very
important.So young people go to finance and other gambling like activities.
The more engineer interested people find jobs in the military. There they work
on extremely costly projects like nuclear aircraft carriers, nuclear
submarines, nuclear weapons, drones, fighter planes, etc. These projects come
with a huge price tag. The technologies used, the specifications used, the
processes used are mostly incompatible with what a civil market needs. So the
military engineers are naturally trained in the wrong direction. For example a
vehicle constructed for the military is heavy, provides protection, has a huge
payload, is robust, has infrastructure for certain types of equipment, etc..
Think of a tank or a hummer. Most of these requirements don't fit into what is
needed for, say, automobiles. There we need to look at design, comfort, fuel
efficiency, etc. But the US cars mostly (not all) are oversized, bulky, fuel
inefficient, ugly. Why? Because the engineer culture constantly has an influx
of different values coming from military engineering. For them it is more
important to drive securely through the streets of Bagdad, and not through
some large US city.

Now, I think there is a need to work on topics like cyber security, but it may
help at the same time to reduce other projects like the large spying agencies
and much of the military. Currently these are expanding in the wrong
direction.

~~~
berntb
As a counter argument, consider DARPA. They do important R&D that no one else
do. (As far as we know; it is a relatively open process).

You could make quite a good argument that military, academic and industrial
research are partly orthogonal; they complement each others.

But I can agree that to waste money and really _build_ the military equipment
is mostly a waste of money. :-)

~~~
lispm
The D in DARPA is for 'Defense'. For some time it was just ARPA. They added
the D so that nobody makes the mistake to misunderstand the nature of their
research: advanced research for military. Automated warfare, weapons of the
future, soldier of the future, robot drones, ...

The other stuff like material, sensors, etc. is just basic research needed for
weapons.

I would propose to shift the research money to projects like cleaning up
nuclear weapon production sites, energy efficiency, cleaning the old coal
power plants and more. Probably more people are endangered by the emissions of
the aging coal power plants than from enemies in foreign countries...

~~~
berntb
My point was, the research money for DARPA are well spent -- and probably
increase human science and technology in better ways than most any other use
of that money. Including e.g. emergency health care.

If you have that much trouble with weapon research I'm sorry, but don't throw
out the advanced prosthetics with the water.

(Sorry for coming in late.)

------
jjm
We can't rely in gov't funding to spur interest in geekdom,
<http://m.cnbc.com/id/43499606> Firms Have Record $800 Billion Of Cash But
Still Won't Hire

------
siculars
I don't think you could pay me enough to work for the government. As a geek, I
am of the opinion that geeks care very little for bureaucracy which the
government is by definition. Not that this article is about working for the
government but rather "geekifying" the employees of tomorrow. What they can do
is create programs to whet the appetite of impressionable young minds from
every background. Those that take to it will persevere. Others will not. Let's
not forget that this is not Soviet Russia where people became what they were
told to become.

------
gaustin
I got a BA in Computer Science (with mediocre grades) in college because I
wasn't mature enough to apply myself in the difficult mathematics courses. I'm
not sure if I can manage to do interesting/valuable things without going back
to school.

My entire career has consisted of making and maintaining more or less the same
applications for 10 years. I know I could just self-teach it all, but I do
much better with a peer group and a little structure.

Sad, but I don't see a way out of it.

------
aj700
The English speaking countries of the world need a 'free movement of labour'
agreement, like the EU.

IE, UK, US, CA, AU, NZ

------
thomaslangston
How I'd approach this problem:

1) Decriminalize & culturally normalize exploratory activities 2) Reform
intellectual property law 3) Create a strong co-op/apprenticeship market that
engages students from legal working age through college

------
sliverstorm
I wonder, is this shortage they see only an issue for CS-type work, or geeks
in general? They have many other fields of development besides security,
algorithms and the like.

------
marknadal
Perhaps the 43 percent enrollment drop was partly due to the "geeks" leaving
college and scoring funding for their startup.

Perhaps the "without college graduates with the ability to understand and
innovate cutting edge technologies in the decades to come" is due to the
problem that colleges are usually several years behind in teaching the newest
software. Are you going to hire somebody who learned how to do AJAX calls to
PHP in school or somebody who is running websockets to Node.js?

Perhaps "...appeal to teens, but they want programs to include career days,
mentoring, lab tours and counseling." is exactly what turns off a hacker.
Solving problems is engaging, getting lectured at by some mentor or counselor
is not.

The real shortage will be from pushing all the hackers into lulzsec and
anonymous, not from the imploding academia.

------
georgieporgie
If you go into computer science, you will:

* Work with a lot of socially underdeveloped people. Hey, they spend their time fighting compilers, not reaching consensus. Soft skills are largely irrelevant.

* Probably work in one of a very few technology hubs around the world. This is all the more painful when you realize how little interaction you actually need with your team, and you could be doing your job from a shack on a Thai beach.

* Never have your job understood by anyone. Unless your S.O. is also a geek, he/she will have no deep understanding and appreciation of your work, beyond the decent salary. Random strangers will have no idea what "software engineer" or "researcher" means.

* Spend your life in front of a computer. If you are in a certain percentage of the population (which you won't know), you may suffer debilitating physical pain from this which curbs or ends your career.

* Experience a significant uptick in ageism around your mid-thirties. Just when you're gaining some wisdom to go along with your sponge-like learning ability, you'll suddenly find yourself devalued for no objective reason.

You can go into finance and become a millionaire, or at least hob-nob with a
few. You can become a doctor, lawyer, or (to a lesser extent) a CPA, probably
make better money, and get significantly more respect. You can become a
teacher, cop, or join the military and make less, but be labeled 'hero'. Why
would you want to be a professional geek?

My advice to young people is to pursue your interest in CS, but major in
something else. Being in a non-CS field with outstanding computer skills makes
you very special. Those same computer skills are merely so-so in tech centers,
and you have no additional versatility.

~~~
Meai
Social interactions are trivial compared to computer science. Truly smart
people have no difficulty talking to others, because their knowledge propelled
them to understand how little sense it makes to be impolite in face of all
that is to know. I would wager that it's others who have difficulty talking to
us programmers in a clear, calm and efficient way, not the other way around.

If you care about how others perceive your job, then you have underlying
character problems that should be solved by measures other than acquiring an
illustrious job.

Almost everyone spends their life in front of a computer nowadays, and this
percentage is only going to grow.

If I may presume as much: We are in computer science / engineering because we
want to stop having to deal with bullshit. Every fabric of life seems to be
pervaded with it. Have you actually talked to graduates from other courses?
They retain little to nothing of what they learnt. Their knowledge is useless
trivia. Doctors know nothing of how their medications _actually_ work.They are
glorified nurses.Lawyers deal with abstract, hilariously overcomplicated laws
and loopholes. Computer science is about the last bastion of sanity in this
world.

~~~
billybob
"Doctors know nothing of how their medications actually work. They are
glorified nurses."

My wife is a doctor, still in residency, so I know the kind of training
doctors go through. She has taken in an inhuman amount of information during
her training. No, she hasn't retained it all, but that's impossible.

Geeks understand that we're working with a very deep stack, and for nearly all
of us, there are parts of the stack we don't understand. Say you're making a
web app. Complete understanding would include include psychology and user
interaction theory, color theory and screen resolutions and graphic design,
the inner workings of browsers, markup, CSS and Javascript, the whole
networking stack from electrical pulses up to HTTP, public/private key
encryption, the many nuances of well-factored code, compilers and
interpreters, databases, operating systems, memory managent, and chip logic
down to the logical gates and the low-level physics of electricity. What parts
can go wrong and how? What security risks exist in this stack?

There is too much for one person to know it all, and that's in __a system that
people designed __, where there __are __specialists who can fully understand
at least part of it. Doctors have an even deeper stack, from chemistry and DNA
and cell biology up to organs and systems and disease processes, all the way
up to the psychology of patient interactions. __Nobody __understands the parts
of this stack. People spend their whole lives studying things like cellular
metabolic processes and immune system biochemical cascades and don't fully
understand them. How can a doctor know more than all the specialists combined?

Clearly there are good doctors and bad ones. But it's ludicrous to say that
they "retain little to nothing of what they learned" or "their knowledge is
useless trivia." It's arrogance.

If someone tells you their monitor doesn't work and they think it's because
they have a computer virus, you could hardly begin to tell them how wrongly
they understand their computer. You would not appreciate having your
objections dismissed by this person who does not know your field at all.
Please don't do the same to people who are experts in other highly complex
fields.

~~~
Meai
Thank you, I didn't think of it this way. You are right.

