UK needs comp sci grads, so why isn't it hiring them? Computer science degrees need to have a clearer focus on making grads more employable. In fact, according to a report into the low employment rates among students, institutions offering comp-sci courses are so terrible at it that employers look to holders of other degrees to fill the comp-sci-shaped hole. Unemployment among CS …
If computer science is going to be one (hint - if the subject has the word science, it isn't one) then it needs to cover fundamentals rather than making sure that 2016's graduates have 3years experience of Visual Studio 2019.
The reason we hire other STEM grads is that, for the most part, CS grads are the least capable (ie thick) students who took CS because they had a computer at home and they thought it would get them a job.
Agreed, I have a CS degree, and I am sure to add the robotics & intelligent machines suffix for the course I took... The basic CS degree was filled with terrible students, yet I would hire them over many other nations Masters graduates....
I'm a mathematician, according to my degree, with what the Americans would call a "minor" in CS. Yet I have a career exclusively in IT on the basis of that.
The CS students on the course when I took my degree were - to put it mildly - bog useless with computers. It very much was "the course that my mum sent me on because I'm 'good with computers' she said". I mean, I was helping MSc's with their minimax algorithm for their "computer draughts AI player" - they were in their fourth year, I was in my first, and they needed my help. And I spotted bugs, advised on their code and could see their mistakes from miles away.
- They don't code.
- They don't manage systems.
- They don't research anything beyond what PC World sell.
- They'd never tried any alternative OS (our uni was very good at having Windows NT and Linux dual-boot on EVERY machine in the CompSci department - I was the only person I ever saw boot into Linux, and definitely the only one to do it by preference and as a matter of course).
- They'd never installed an OS
- They had no idea about the basics of networking or hardware (Not a big deal in CS terms, but it just indicates that you've never played with hardware ever - I had to install one guy's CDROM drive for him, ffs!)
and - scariest of all - all the theory eluded them too. Being a mathematician, logic, graph theory and coding theory were just second nature and not taxing at all, but the CS guys "didn't see the point" (er... networking, encryption, data verification and transmission? You know, all that "sciencey" bit of CS?).
The "Introduction to Programming" course (2 years long) was in Java. No word of exaggeration, I turned up to the first lecture and then handed in EVERY assignment remotely without attending a single other session. Sometimes I didn't even bother to test it (literally, one-liners of programs). People were just that dumb on it that I stood out from the rest. I'd never touched Java to that point, but, come on, if you've ever programmed then it was just a case of Java For Dummies or whatever reference equivalent for your skill level.
CS was very much lacking and the bits of CS that mattered were mostly mathematical and all the CS guys dropped out or really struggled. The "computing" side (as I like to distinguish) was completely absent - as you'd expect - and they didn't even know how to do those bits. They'd barely picked up a computer beyond games (the only conversations I remember with others were about games and/or emulators) and they had little interest.
Needless to say, when the alumni pages are published, almost none of them work in IT (except maybe the marketing or sales side of it).
The problem has been around a long time (I started uni last century!) but it's still present in even state and private schools. Computing (using a computer) has blurred with CS (building, analysing, improving, researching, etc. computers, data, networks and associated phenomena) to the point that everyone thinks they can do it and teachers think that a "good with computers" kid should study CS and have a career in IT. It's just not true. Most of them I wouldn't leave alone with a folder of files to sort. And they then became the teachers to that next generation, so the problem has only worsened.
In 15 years of school-IT, I know one teacher who programmed in FORTRAN and COBOL (trained as a mathematician), one who could confidently program, explain, build and test circuits, logic diagrams, memory buses, network algorithms, packets, etc. (trained as a industrial control guy originally), and my brother who could teach IT quite competently (mathematician). The CS guys are literally nowhere to be seen.
Hell, my friend who works in datacentres for names I guarantee you all have heard of (including "The Big G") has no CS qualifications at all, nor do most of the people around them. CS people are either CS academia for live, or don't go into CS/IT at all, in general. For most, it's literally just a "computing" degree.
Interesting that you mention MSc.
I did a BSc CompSci many years ago, and the university also offered an MSc IT which was to most purposes a one year conversion course. To my cynical mind I always thought that many people on that course had realised their existing degree was getting them nowhere, and that "getting into computers" was a good way forward.
One slight problem was that the MSc lot would also be in the same lectures as second/thrid year BSc, which was slightly entertaining when they asked some rather basic questions. To be honest I did feel a bit sorry for some of them, as they were a bit out of their depth.
The flip side is that a year or so later when on a milk round bash for one of the big consultancies (who bigged up their computing credentials), one of the recent grads doing some of the recruiting was one of the more unknowlegdeable MScs we'd encountered. That was an eye opener. I did somewhat cynically wonder if the fact they had an MSc (no matter what the subject) had trumped a BSc somewhere along the line. But probably more truthfully the grads helping with the recruiting were usually more favourable toward people in their old departments/facalties. Plus they were alll a bit under the weather having maybe having a little too much to drink the evening before...
I did an MSc conversion course because it seemed to me as though Philosophy was probably not going to pay the bills.
I loved it and found computer science suited me well, although it was a really steep learning curve, but in the group in my year, I think maybe three or four of us came out of the course actually knowing how to program to a practical level, which would be a quarter of the group at best. Everyone else was getting by on sharing code, which was not entirely discouraged by the department as far as I can tell. I suspect I sometimes got worse marks for having written my own code than a lot of the class got after copying one of the other experienced programmers' work.
I do wonder how many of that group are still cutting code twenty years later. Not that many of us, I suspect.
I wouldn't change anything about my CS degree. It covered everything comprehensibly, architecture, algorithms, graphics (theory and programming GPU), cybernetics, security/encryption and all the maths to support everything, without explicitly teaching programming at all. Yes a lot of people turned up with zero programming experience, but they were expected to bring themselves up to speed by reading between the lines.
Unlike the laughable Microsoft propaganda that passes for A-level CS, we mostly got free choice of "the right tool for the job" in later courses.
Would not want my experience diluted to make it more corporate friendly. However this article does explain why shit-stain companies in the UK keep getting hacked.
"If computer science is going to be one ... then it needs to cover fundamentals rather than making sure that 2016's graduates have 3years experience of Visual Studio 2019."
Indeed - the good courses teach the fundamentals of the discipline, not how to use a specific thing. Unfortunately, employers seem to want fully-formed employees that don't require training, or they did when I graduated (e.g. trainee programmer requiring 2 years relevant experience, lol)...
Hate to disappoint you, but the bookies (that is, people who actually stand to lose money if they get the prediction wrong) are offering odds that look more like a 2:1 victory for staying in. The only people predicting an even fight are the pollsters, who hardly have a stellar record in such things.
I think the 2008 recession ended in 2009, but then double dipped in 2011, which is when unemployment peaked. The country has had positive growth since 2013 and continuously declining unemployment figures since 2011. But possibly we're involved in a practical example of the difference between the formal technical definition of a recession and the average economic wellbeing, rendering the issue moot?
I'm also aware that:
* the pound has dropped substantially versus the dollar during the uncertainty about Brexit; and
* several large companies have sworn they'll leave the UK if the UK leaves the EU.
I therefore believe that if we left the UK then:
* the uncertainty would increase — who are we going to be able to agree new trade deals with, what will they say and when? — and therefore the pound would likely drop further; and
* at least some of those companies probably mean it.
Therefore I stand by my assessment that a Brexit would lead to a[nother] painful recession.
I'd have dared imagined that the split was:
* Leavers: the pain would be a temporary market reaction that would last only until Britain had re-established its links with the world, at which point it could become stronger because all applicable regulations and decisions would consider the needs of the UK only; versus
* Remainers: the pain would be part of a market correction that revalued the UK according to its worth if not part of a larger trade bloc; the UK would subsequently remain weakened because it would not be a member of any group with the soft power and negotiating weight to get good deals for it. Furthermore, 50% of trade is with the EU and the EU would likely seek to punish the UK for its departure as a symbolic gesture, therefore ties to the mainland would be negatively affected for at least a generation.
... not so much that anybody really thinks that leaving wouldn't cause at least immediate pain.
"I think the 2008 recession ended in 2009, but then double dipped in 2011, which is when unemployment peaked."
I believe, although I cannot be bothered to check, that when revised figures came out that second recession did not, in fact, happen. Even though you might have thought it did shortly after you lived in it. It's all very strange.
"Because the employers expect to hire a new grad for about the same wage as the window cleaner, drop them in a production system have them producing code on day one."
Lots of this. There's wildly unreasonable expectations from industry, who don't want to spend a penny on training for their newest employees and demand that they're basically be as good as an applicant with 5 years at the coalface... though obviously, at half-to-a-quarter of the salary because of the 'learning opportunity'.
Um... if you're knocking off half their salary for the experience gain, then you need to lower your standards a bit. In mature professions, like architecture, law or engineering, they expect to have to meet the universities halfway. Commercial practices spend years training their staff and organize huge CPD sessions for them. IT departments and dev shops, conversely, see little reason to offer any professional support despite the fact that IT changes far, far, far faster than law or buildings, and then blame universities for not teaching first years technology that won't be invented until 3 years later.
On the flip side, we keep telling CS grads that their 'expected starting wage' straight out of uni is about 30k a year. Then they actually hit the job market and find the only job that'll touch them with a barge pole is Junior Javascript Front End Developer, sitting in a cupboard adjusting the pixel offset of the OK button for 18 grand a year and learning absolutely nothing for the first 3 years of the job. Which they naturally turn their nose up at. In London, where they actually can get 30k a year, they quickly discover that this just about affords 365 packets of supernoodles and the rent on a garden shed in Hackney.
Very true. In the last 10 years or so we've seen the "tick box" mentality come to the fore with some companies requiring candidates to have *every* skill that the job needs. You see certain jobs circulating for months around the job agencies.
When the right candidate turns up then some of these places don't want to pay for all of that valuable hard-won experience. At one employer I was told (as a contractor) on day one "We are paying you a lot of money so we have high expectations for your performance." - yet I was on less than I'd been earning 10 years previously and it certainly wasn't me driving the Maserati in the car park.
It's ironic that there is much moaning about skills shortages but there is very little commitment to ongoing training. Excuses like lack of budget, market unpredictability, and the like may find willing ears in the boardroom but they ring rather hollow in the wider context.
"The software developers who engineer the fly-by-wire controls for airliners might disagree. Safety related software requires a colossal amount of discipline."
I think you'll find that those who are producing this sort of software are either engineers themselves or working closely with, or under engineers. Engineers can do software, but I agree completely that software developers are not engineers. The typical software development cycle of 1. get it working, 2. get it out there, 3. fix it - runs completely against all that defines engineering.
Currently reading "Building Micro services" and the author states that if building a bridge were like software development, when we were halfway to the other bank we would realise it was made of sand, not granite, and we would be told were actually building a railway bridge rather than a footbridge. Made me chuckle
The typical software development cycle of 1. get it working, 2. get it out there, 3. fix it - runs completely against all that defines engineering
Whilst that might be far too common these days, don't tar us all with the same brush.
When I cut my teeth, "embedded" meant that your board would be welded into a metal box and thrown in the sea for a year. If you had a bug - you might only find out about it at the end of the trial, which would mean the whole job had been pointless. We did quite a bit of design and quite a bit of testing back in those days...
I frequently marvel at what self-proclaimed professionals will stoop to. I've seen code go out the door because some PHB thinks it is better to "deliver" on time rather than deliver something that stands any chance of working. Having been the recipient of such utter shite, I am firmly of the opinion that dumping crap on a customer tends to mean you don't get invited back.
Vic.
"Yes, we know that. Which means, if you think about it, that Mr Massey has made a very good point."
I agree completely however if we want real software engineers they must be taught to be engineers, to approach problems as engineers do, to use reasoning as engineers do. The main issue is that compared to real trained and qualified engineers, a large number of sw devs at the moment are just children playing with toys.
absolutely correct, with the honourable exception of some avionics and railway programming. the rest of it is blacksmithing, not engineering. witness the daily diet of internet fuckups, now extending to the global payment system.
I might add I include myself in the blacksmithing category...
"Sorry but there is no such thing as a software engineer, just like you won't find car doctors either. Engineering is a discipline, the state of most current software products shows exactly why no sw dev can be called an engineer"
Agreed on engineering being a discipline requiring a rigorous approach, but the rest of your argument appears to be based upon conflating "a large number/proportion" with "all", and is false.
Software engineering is to writing code as civil engineering is to bricklaying.
Describing someone as a software engineer is saying that alongside their dev. or coding skills they will have in their skillset things like requirements capture, design, test, metrics generation, fault analysis, procedure creation, etc.
The answer to your question is
NEITHER
Just look at what Lloyds Bank is doing with their IT Dept. (Announced today)
Get yourself and Indian Name and a Degree and you might have a chance of a job in the Black Hole of Kolkata.
The recent CS grads we've empoyed were to be brutally honest, shite. Not a clue about problem solving yet could talk for hours about agile and how brilliant it was for everything under the sun. They failed to recognise that we were actually using Agile and not waterfall. The comments earlier about installing an OS, configuring it (and importantly securing it) were totally beyond them.
Showing them the Servers in the the backup DC was an education in its own right. "Why aren'y you using AWS or Azure?"
Because dummy, the information on these boxes runs a billion ££££ industrial complex and if some numpty digs up the network link with a JCB the resulting explsion could make Flixborough seem like a family firework display. He kept on trying to get u interested in Azure until he left to go work on Web Pages. No ambition.
From my experience as a Comp Sci Student and having given the subject quite some thought in the past:
1. Technology's progress makes a lot of the skills the course was designed for obselete even as its being taught
2. Good Comp Sci courses lean heavily towards software engineering as opposed to straight coding and many people straight up don't enjoy it. Only one person out of my group of friends (10 or so) actually has a job writing code.
3. Coding isn't hard - anybody with a mindset that successfully acquire a STEM degree will be able to learn the skills sufficiently quickly on a job as long as they aren't designing the program, only writing code
4. The modules I was subjected to that were supposed to increase employability were a joke, designed by management types and delivered by management types with no substance (actually, now that I look back on it, those modules fit perfectly with working life)
This seems to be the problem these days. Courses seem to have bureaucracy built in now and becoming more a training program to tick a box. I did something at the OU regarding their computing course and although some of the course is good, others parts are purely a waste of time and don't add any "engineering/science" benefits at all.
I am considering doing something else, elsewhere, mainly for the fact that I actually enjoy studying new things but would also be a good bit of updating on my knowledge. I wonder if brick & mortar Universities do part-time/distance courses.
I should clarify - coding to the deplorable standards that most Small to medium businesses require isn't hard. Badly written code that runs slowly can be given a bigger box to run on at less cost than getting somebody to spend more time developing the software. Once the software is completely unfit for purpose, you can then get another intern to write something with different goalposts.
Coding a resilient piece of software that works consistently and quickly is bloody difficult.
The first four of those steps are the basis of most scientific discovery. Step 5 is then "figure out why the worse kludge worked" and is only performed if you have the luxury of time to learn. If your workplace (or university) doesn't give you time for step 5, you need to find one that does.
I quite concur with your point 4: I too had to do a selection of pointless modules aimed at improving employability, which failed so to do.
But as @Jon Massey also said above, I'm not convinced we do need millions of computer scientists. Some, yes. Many software engineers and a whole panoply of "IT types" in various guises, very few of which actually need to be computer scientists.
Of course technologies go out of date rapidly, however, I would suggest that a *good* course would teach skills that can be applied regardless of the technology employed.
"I would suggest that a *good* course would teach skills that can be applied regardless of the technology employed."
My course tried - after working on getting everybody up to speed. Before that point, phrases like "I didn't realise there would be so much maths involved" could be overheard from those with IT A-levels and they had to be taught the basics of coding as opposed to how to be a software engineer. Even after that point, laziness tended to win out and the concept of getting the program working only being 50% of the work fell by the wayside.
My counter to your point lies in the fact that the universally applicable skills have to be taught in relation to the practical skills and leads to a necessary loss of abstraction to form a coherent whole.
From my experience as a Comp Sci Student and having given the subject quite some thought in the past....:
Perhaps the solution is for college based degrees in Comp Sci to end, and have only degree level apprenticeships? The employers provide hands on experience in a real work environment, and steer the academic input, the colleges provide that academic rigour and content (stopping the employers simply using apprentices as cheap labour). And the students get a degree debt free, and graduate with real employment experience. As the students are essentially chosen by the employers, this might also eliminate many of the dossers who commentards appear to believe are a good chunk of Comp Sci students at the moment.
Clearly the employers WILL be using the apprentices as cheap labour, and that's part of the Faustian pact, but if prospective apprentices don't like that idea, there's always the prospect of accruing £40k of debt and a full time Comp Sci degree from the University of Derby.
The employers provide hands on experience in a real work environment, and steer the academic input
You're assuming that all participating employers will steer the student in the right direction; I would suggest that a significant number of companies have significant problems with rectal-cubital discrimination...
Vic.
1. Technology's progress makes a lot of the skills the course was designed for obselete even as its being taught
Not sure about that. In the main we're still running on a Von Neumann architecture.
I think the problem is there are very few "Computer Scientists" of the past 20 years who would understand that statement based on their degree. Although they are probably a whizz with Dreamweaver (or whatever the cool kids are using this year).
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