
Professor gave us dire warning that CS is going to be the next Art History major - sizzle
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/biwbfw/professor_gave_us_a_dire_warning_that_cs_is_going/
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mmmeff
There's some good points here. I don't have a degree and, as a senior in their
late 20s, find myself teaching things I consider basic to CS graduates.

I work in one of the big 5. I keep finding myself wondering why we have 50+
engineers on our team when we can never deliver anything on time. Everything
we build feels cumbersome, over-engineered, and overly-reliant on bespoke
internal tooling that nobody outside of our company uses. After coming from
startup land and building infinitely more useful products in a 10th of the
time with 1-pizza teams, I wonder how the hell this gargantuan company can
move around $1B market cap on wall street when its so inefficient and full of
incompetent engineers.

It genuinely feels like we've reached peak too-many-cooks. I keep expecting
mass layoffs to cull the fat but they never come. We just keep hiring more and
more and more.

This can't be sustainable.

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lawrenceyan
If you don’t mind saying, what company do you specifically work at currently?

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ww520
Every couple years someone would predict software developers (where CS majors
were heading) would be out of job for various reasons. Spreadsheets would let
business people to do analysis. Report writers let people to generate reports.
Visual programming let people drag and drop to build software. VBA will take
care of all business needs. Rule engines will generate programs en-mass. Code
gen from UML/State-Diagram would make developers obsolete. The latest is the
claim that AI will generate software and replace developers. These people are
clueless about the nature of programming, software abstraction, and the trends
to automate all aspects of life. Software and developers are more likely to
put people from other fields out of job than the other way around.

It's more likely the teaching aspect of the college professor will be replaced
by AI/machine in the near future.

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grad_ml
lol. Yeah, if schools can commit to it, top notch online lectures from top
notch schools, will surely turn not-so-good-profs into a tenured TA.

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carboy
Yeah, I remember the big art history boom times. It was crazy, it seemed that
everyone was getting into the space, salaries seemed to be going up almost
daily, the completion was cut throat.

The professor should stick to teaching computer science and not try to be
market economist.

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ericmcer
I thought we already went through this in the early 2000's when everyone
predicted all CS work would be outsourced to India in the near future. The
fact is we work in an industry with potentially crazy profit margins, a
handful of skilled programmers can create something worth X1000 their income.
Skimping on your development team has been proved again and again to be a
terrible idea.

I do agree that if you are in it for the money, you will have a bad time and
not get very far.

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heavenlyblue
>> a handful of skilled programmers can create something worth X1000 their
income.

What you're trying to say here is that 'only a handful of programmers have
been at the right place at the right time to earn the position that gives them
enough equity worth x1000 the income of others'.

There are many talented developers out there.

Trying to say that an average developer from India has the same chances of
getting involved with a highly-financed startup at it's early stages as an
average developer from Silicon Valley is just misguided at least.

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cjohnson318
India aside, we have the same issue with zip codes in America. The number of
high school students from Santa Clara County to become developers or work in
lucrative tech jobs dwarfs the number of students from similarly populous
counties from other states landing the same jobs. Colocation, mentoring,
networking, and cultural similarities really matter.

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hodgesrm
The real problem with CS is that it changes quickly and skills become
obsolete. If you don't actively work to maintain current skills you are likely
to end up getting turfed out in the next downturn. Even that's not a unique
problem. IBM assembler programmers and blacksmiths are both pretty rare these
days, for similar reasons.

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jdsully
Computer Science - as in the fundamentals and mathematics behind computation
do not change frequently at all. Graph theory never really goes out of style,
and the biggest changes have been with respect to distributed computing and
conflict resolution.

The thing that scares me the most is the confusion of software frameworks and
platforms with "CS" and fundamentals. Its as if people believe there aren't
any fundamentals at all.

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hodgesrm
I mentor students in CS programs. A lot of the material is very topical. Also,
the stuff that gets you a job (or helps you keep it) is likewise topical. It's
fine to know about dining philosophers but if you can't implement solutions in
the language du jour a lot of places won't hire you.

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jdsully
I really think that explains much of the problems of our industry. CS should
teach the fundamental concepts all these languages are based upon. When you've
learned that a new language is merely a different mapping of these concepts
rather than something completely new, it becomes quite easy to pick up new
things. You understand they are just assigning different syntactical weight to
the same old concepts.

In that respect I liked that my education taught me things like LISP and
smalltalk that are quite different from C/C++/Java that was big at the time.
If I didn't have that field of view I might think smalltalk is its own thing
entirely and I'd have to relearn everything.

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hodgesrm
This is a point where reasonable humans can disagree. There's a middle ground
that includes enough current practice to get you an entry level job + enough
of the theory to ensure you can continue learning efficiently over the course
of your career.

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rdlecler1
In the future there will be three jobs: artists, engineers, and sellers.
Artists will design and create the products but they’re at the top of the
pyramid. Next you have sales for people who don’t have the technical or
creative skills but who know how to hustle. Then you have the people who are
going to implement the ideas of the artist and give sales something to sell.
Insofar as CS is how we build with information I see this as the biggest class
and see no oversupply, only oversupply of unqualified talent.

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fallingfrog
What about just ordinary proles? I mean the big shiny economic machine is not
nearly so automated as it appears to be. It’s a mechanical Turk composed of
billions of low paid laborers. Even Elon musk is discovering that there’s a
limit to automation.

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NotSammyHagar
If you are doing creative handmade software (bespoke) then you are doing an
artistic endeavor, like writing, solving math problems via proofs. I've been
fortunate to do that during my career in cs - working on infrastructure
software. But how many databases does the world need? Eventually we'll have
enough of these tools and more people imho will just put tools together to
solve problems.

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WheelsAtLarge
I agree 100%. CS programs are packed now because they pay is so high vs other
majors. The problem is that there are only so many positions the economy can
accommodate and many of the students going through the system now will never
get a job in the field.

The outstanding graduates from the prestigious programs will always get a
great job but everyone else will have to fight for the jobs that are left.

Look at India. The schools are turning out a bunch of CS/Engineers but the
economy can not accommodate the number that are graduating so many of them are
getting jobs they could have gotten without all the education. The same thing
is happening here.

The real winners will be the ones that use CS as a stepping stone to creating
a business, therefore, creating your own need for the degree.

If I had to get a degree now I would pick a combination CS and business degree
with a minor in a field that's in the humanities and start to figure out how
I'm going to put it to use.

A CS degree alone will lead to a job that does not need it and could have been
gotten with any college degree. It's really supply and demand in effect.

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derangedHorse
We definitely do not meet the demand for programmers in the market. Big
software companies don't only look at the number of CS grads since the real
need is for talent. Not all of these graduates have the skill required to work
in top tier companies, but I'd argue that not all jobs need top tier talent,
and that there's plenty of jobs out there that are still looking for the
average joe programmer.

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WheelsAtLarge
Look at this page: [https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
technology/...](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
technology/mobile/computer-programmers.htm)

Programming jobs are expected to fall. But I bet people seeking and training
for jobs will continue to increase.

Also, you emphasize my point. Joe programmers don't need a full CS degree.
From experience, I know a 2-year associate degree is enough.

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aznpwnzor
1\. without more context about who the professor is targeting his tirade at
and which company C levels he's actually talking, it's hard to evaluate this

2\. will there be shrinking in the middle band of SAP/Infosys companies where
work has already been proven to be fungible (by their h1b shenanigans) in the
near future? probably. does this sort of pressure exist in the middle band of
any profession? yes (even if the AMA is fighting tooth and nail to
artificially limit supply in the case with MDs)

3\. is AI mostly a hype-add to boost valuation? yes. but does a lot of it work
and generate real revenue? yes. almost by definition the more valued something
is, the more likely it is overvalued. I fear this professor hasn't seen most
of the unsexy AI work. where 90% of the value may come from the actual AI
work, but 90% of the work is on the infra around it.

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8bitsrule
I'd be more likely to pay attention to someone who'd already laid down, say, a
$100 million bet on this idea.

AI's are still running cars into freeway barriers and firetrucks. The 'big 5'
can't even hold on to "their" own data (yours).

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world32
> He made the argument that globalization (read: Asia) is pumping out masses
> of CS people who corporations will continue to use to write cheap code and
> do CS work at low ass wages.

Haven't we been through that before?

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devxpy
This pycon talk from 5 years ago, is still, extremely relevant

[https://youtu.be/_xpKFWzMceE](https://youtu.be/_xpKFWzMceE)

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scotty79
More computer programmers of low quality means there will be even more work
for programmers. Oil engineers don't create work for themselves.

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sigi45
Yes there are not that many good people in CS. Nothing new here.

But still we can't find enough good people in munich at all. And it is not
just munich.

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chopin
But the reason might be ... Munich? I certainly wouldn't want to move there.

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masonic
What is bad about Munich? (For those of us off the continent)

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chopin
Cost of living too high.

I've currently plenty of space and a half hour commute. That wouldn't be
possible in Munich even if I got paid much more than now.

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mathattack
Anyone can major in Art History without a lot of effort. It’s not a
differentiating credential for many jobs.

CS is a very difficult major. It’s a differentiating credential for many jobs.
That’s why the market clears differently.

The quality of CS programs (and grads) may go down but there will always be a
market for the talented. I think Finance and Accounting might be the more
appropriate comparison. There is a lot of outsourcing and crap accountants,
but the best financiers still do very well.

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fock
would sign that. Basically what you learn in a good CS program isn't trivially
accessible or more or less "soft" knowledge requiring only a (very good)
command of the language you already need for day-2-day communication. It
requires logic and strict thoughts – while those things aren't necessarily
making you a good coder, this are skills not wielded by the masses anytime
soon because they require (for most people) to really sit down and learn.

For art history you probably go there, look into your textbook and just start
talking about random stuff associated with limited data and if you're audience
isn't really into their code/peer-bias-bubble/.. there is a big range of
"reasonable" things you can say. (saying that as a physics major with a lot of
CS friends and random acquaintances which I regularly impress by just
introducing random facts (they don't think a STEM-guy knows...) in
conversation and giving them a techy twist...)

As to the salary question: apparently a lot of people see academia as a sort
of fancy tradeschool with guaranteed above average income and of course this
is not the main objective of academic ventures and if everyone thinks that,
some has to be the below-average-guy or gal. For the average person studying
solely for the purpose of eventually making more money is just plainly stupid.

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pasabagi
>It requires logic and strict thoughts

>art history you _probably_ go there, look into your textbook and just start
talking about random stuff associated

(emphasis mine)

>with limited data

This is all really funny stuff.

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fock
I don't really get your comment. Yes, I didn't write any assignments in art
history nor do I exactly know, what you actually learn from art history, but
guessing from checking other peoples assignments, talking to people and
looking at their lecture notes in similar field (e.g. communication science,
ancient languages and archaeology) I assume that you basically have to read up
some facts and then can go to any lecture you fancy and start contributing in
a more or less meaningful way. You can't do that in CS or physics or
engineering – it just won't work.

Note that I don't intend to belittle those kind of studies; if you put a lot
of effort into it, you're most certainly reaching levels of conceptual
understanding and a command of language I might never achieve in my life. If
one gets "satisfaction"/"gratification" [whatever you need to keep going on a
personal level (excluding modern day BS where these things are just used for
justifying the continuing exploitation of labor)] from that, I'm all up to you
pursuing it. Still, looking at the kind of person who idles similar studies
while he/she's waiting tables at Burger-King, the whole idea of academic
studies seems a little bit pointless (similar to the CS guys rushing college
for the best paying IT-project management job) – though you probably also get
to learn a thing or two about the way we live (contrary to the drones going
for the highest-paying majors)

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pasabagi
My comment was basically pointing out the irony of claiming that art history
people say stuff with limited data, based on your obviously limited experience
of art history as a field.

> I assume that you basically have to read up some facts and then can go to
> any lecture you fancy and start contributing in a more or less meaningful
> way.

This isn't true, unless you're an undergrad at a really bad university. The
really 'unproductive' fields like art history tend to have a pretty asymptotic
difficulty curve, since funding is almost impossible to find. That makes later
stages really, incredibly competitive, unless you're basically willing to pay
through the entire process.

One thing to note about hierarchy of perceived difficulty of university
courses, is that it almost always maps to how useful these courses are to
industry, and almost never maps to how complex the subject actually is.
Traditional Chinese literature, for instance, is horribly difficult. Computer
science, on the other hand, is a subject where people actually try hard to be
understood, and don't write using in bird-worm seal script. Nonetheless, if
you are a computer scientist, people will assume you're smart, and if you're
studying chinese literature, people will assume you're a goof.

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fallingfrog
Feels about right to me. But it’s easy to be wrong when it comes to predicting
the future. Still, feels about right.

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Hydraulix989
Can somebody explain what exactly happened to petroleum engineering?

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ww520
Boom and bust. Oil price goes up. The need for gas exploration and drilling
goes up. Money pours in. Petroleum engineer's pay goes up. Oil price goes
down. The trend reverses.

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Hydraulix989
I still see pretty high pay (~$250k) for petroleum engineers.

