Published earlier this year, but still relevant.
Even in europe there is no workers union for IT. Atleast not that i know of. IG metal and Verdi didnt answer my email about that
Computer Science, a popular college major, has one of the highest unemployment rates
Submitted 7 months ago by mesamunefire@piefed.social to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 months ago
hamburger@discuss.tchncs.de 7 months ago
What? I’m working in IT and am a member of ver.di. Of course it’s an IT union.
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 months ago
They never emailed me back to my question. But good to hear. Is there a specific subsection that i should message?
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Computer science is not IT. IT is about knowing how to use, deploy, and administer existing software solutions, along with a bit of light development to get things to work together when they aren’t necessarily directly compatible.
CS is about creating software solutions and understanding how the pieces fit together (at a low level), as well as how to evaluate algorithms and approach problem solving.
It’s not even coding, though coding is obviously involved. For a coding class, they’ll teach you the language and give problems to help learn that language. For CS classes, they might not care what language you use, or they might tell you to use specific ones and expect you to learn it on your own time. The languages are just tools through which you learn the CS concepts.
An IT professional might know about kernel features and how they relate to overall performance. A coder might be aware that there is a kernel doing OS stuff under the hood. A computer scientist might know the specifics of various parts of what a kernel does and how one is implemented, perhaps they’ve even implemented one themselves for a class (I have, though I was personally interested in that kind of thing and it was for a class notorious for being difficult, so most grads didn’t).
TootSweet@lemmy.world 7 months ago
My employer considers developers, infra, SRE, PC Support, even QA all to be part of the “IT department”. I’ve always used the term “IT” to just cover any specifically “tech” sort of function. As opposed to, say, finance, sales, HR, operations, etc.
M0oP0o@mander.xyz 7 months ago
Computer science is not IT.
ooof got some bad news for you there.
Evotech@lemmy.world 7 months ago
There’s a couple in Norway for engineering / it industry NITO and Tekna
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 months ago
Would you happen to know of any for germany?
Edgarallenpwn@midwest.social 7 months ago
Kinda glad I took the community college IT/infra route when I went back to school a little bit ago, but still scared for the future lol.
dcat@lemmy.world 7 months ago
just learn to code
Daryl@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Computer Science is not learning to code.
In fact, most high end University Computer Science departments do not at any point teach a coding language. Coding languages are taught, in Canada, at Community Colleges and such.
Computer Science is all about developing, perfecting, and discovering the algorithms that are then transcribed to computer code by the junior IT technicians. Coders are a dime a dozen. It is the Computer Systems Designers, project architects, and project developers that make the big money.
A coder can only make good money if they have mastered a computer language that is not very common, like Kubernetes, [Kubernetes,] (kubernetes.io) And you will not learn that from a 'Kubernetes-for-Dummies book borrowed from the library,
vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Kubernetes is not a programming language. It’s a program written in a programming language called Go. Working with Kubernetes involves writing in a data serialisation language called YAML but YAML is not a programming language (IIRC) because it’s not Turing complete.
Krudler@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Thank you for pointing out that CS <> programming.
CS is mostly math, cryptography, signal processing, image processing, information theory, data analysis/storage/transformation, etc.
curiousaur@reddthat.com 7 months ago
There were recent CS grads in my coding boot camp 8 years ago.
theacharnian@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
CS education is notoriously prone to boom-bust cycles.
peaceful_world_view@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Laughs in AI
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 months ago
This person thinks AI is actually good. Funny
peaceful_world_view@lemmy.world 7 months ago
sorry, I thought the /s was implied
Cocopanda@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I was laid off from my charger oem. Now I work at a grocery store till I find a new job. Needed the cheap insurance plus its union. This won’t last for long.
spookedintownsville@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I’m halfway through my bachelor’s CE, but really thinking about dropping and doing a trade instead.
ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
Even if you don’t get a CS job you should still get your degree anyway, it will make getting other jobs easier. A degree is better than no degree.
blockheadjt@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Might not be the best use of that time and tuition money though
piecat@lemmy.world 7 months ago
CE is neat because most companies will treat you as if you had a CS or EE degree. Can always pivot to HW or FPGA
skisnow@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
I’m probably going to cop a few downvotes for this, but in my whole career the only software engineers I ever met who were worth a damn were people who loved it for its own sake, and would be doing it regardless. So, if your feelings about the field are such that you’re thinking you might be better off doing a trade, you’d definitely be better off doing a trade.
Good luck either way.
OmgItBurns@discuss.online 7 months ago
The most important aspect is motivation to improve and do cool shit. That can, also, be said about a lot of professions. The best thing you can do is to find what is most interesting to you and spend at least a few hours a week learning about it or engaging with it. It could be new features of a language you know, a programming methodology that is new to you, learning about/contributing to a FOSS project you like, or anything else.
School and work will almost definitely force you to engage with the parts of development you don’t like, as well will give you an opportunity to engage with the parts of development you do like. It’s on you to keep yourself engaged and improving in your skills.
piecat@lemmy.world 7 months ago
If there’s no hope for getting a job, it doesn’t mean they’re not passionate.
Cocopanda@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Don’t. Just finish it and join an electrical union with your math skills. After you complete your degree. I went into electrical after getting laid off from a malware defense software oem. Get your degree. It carries you further than without it. You can always join the Electrician union nearest you right after you graduate. Check for their sign up times for the year.
PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
I’ve never met anyone in the broadly tech fields (and I’ve been through quite a span of them) who regrets completing an even somewhat relevant degree. I’ve met, many, many people who lament not starting or finishing one (and many of these were very competent, capable people, good at their jobs).
It’s expensive and difficult, sure was for me, but it is very useful (and the learning is fantastic too if you do it right).
NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
So, i’ve been told that all these people need to do is pick up a trade. /s
i’m glad if trade-work was good for you but like all major careers, it’s not meant for everyone. Similar can be said of telling miners to learn to code.
network_switch@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
Also trades have boom and busts too
fortune.com/…/gen-z-ditching-college-secure-trade…
Plus the ones making really good money take a good amount of time to get there and really good money means starting your own business but either way, you won’t escape long hard hours and weekends until probably at least your 40s, that’s if you manage to scale up the business enough with numerous staffed work vehicles. Like a 22 year old software developer can be making what a master plumber does in their first year out of college. Not super common but the $130k+ a year plumber is the top small percent of the field too
outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
The miners thing is insane; as if we dont still need fucking minerals.
passwordforgetter@lemmy.nz 7 months ago
Correct, and the other problem is that if you live in a house with 6-8 other people, and don’t even have anywhere to park a vehicle (as in, not even on the road outside) then it’s never going to work. I imagine what it’d be like if I did a trade, but I couldn’t get to work in the morning because another tenant decided to sleep-in and block my vehicle from leaving the drive. Just ridiculous.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 7 months ago
and trades are usually only employing a specific demographic and they have
Daryl@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Requirements for a job in Computer Science are, in order of importance, first, a demonstrated talent. Second, a demonstrated skill level. Third, demonstrated knowledge.
Just like being a top-tier pianist, all the knowledge, raining, schooling, and education in the world matters nothing if you do not first have the talent.
But you do not need talent to get into a Computer Science course, nor to graduate from one. You just need the knowledge and the marks.
That is why there are so many uneducated, untalented Computer Science graduates out there.
This is the thing the teachers and educators in Computer Science never tell you.
Isthisreddit@lemmy.world 7 months ago
My experience has been that computer science is a huge umbrella term to normies. Many people, including hiring managers seem to thing computer science is more of a trade education where people come out knowing everything about excel, windows, PowerPoint, file conversions, obscure knowledge of ancient software, expertise in setting up enterprise printers, etc
I was developing software for a position I was in, and everyone was shocked I was a developer… (It was a devops job where everyone basically edited yaml or json files all day long…)
Daryl@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
It’s the same with the term AI - everyone uses it today but very few, including most reporters in the media, really understands it or apply it properly.
M0oP0o@mander.xyz 7 months ago
As a Computer science graduate, I have to say:
No shit! The industry is terrible and has no standards (I don’t mean level of quality but there is no agreed accreditation or methodology). If you do end up in a job you will most likely not use even 5% of what whatever school you went to taught you. You will likely work for peanuts as there will always be someone to do it cheaper (not always right, or good, or even usable). You will work with people doing your job that just lied about having any post secondary education. There is almost no ability to move up in any position in the industry, and like everyone I know that stuck with it you will have the same job until you stop working (you will have to take a side move into another department most likely). This is also the industry most likely to get touched by the “good idea fairy” so you will also be exposed to the highest levels of stupid, like 3 layers of outsourcing the NOC to an active warzone sort of stupid.
I should have known it was a bad idea in college when most of my classmates where ACTIVELY WORKING IN THE INDUSTRY TO PAY FOR SCHOOL so they could get a piece of paper that said they could do the thing they where already doing. But I did my 15 plus years and got out, I have my own business now selling drugs and it is way less sketchy.
outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
That was a ride and i love your last sentence.
iii@mander.xyz 7 months ago
My experience is so different to yours.
Work a lot with what I studied, need the algebra daily. I still have people randomly contacting me for interviews. People move a lot, it’s rare to be in the same function for over 3 years.
lightnsfw@reddthat.com 7 months ago
You’re dead on about the 5% of what you learned thing. I’m on like my 20th tech job and pretty much everyone one has been different. What I learned in school has applied to only the most basic aspects of any of those jobs. Everything else was learning as I go and just generally understanding how PCs and software work. I have done fairly well with upward mobility (currently about as high as I can go without taking another leadership position) but I had to bust my ass to do it and it was only because I always stood out because of that so I would be first choice. There were never enough promotions/mobility to go around to everyone that was deserving.
M0oP0o@mander.xyz 7 months ago
If you talk to people who went to different schools you quickly realize that its all different. I spent a lot of time learning antenna theory, Cisco networking and really out of date system admin, while on the other side of the nation my future co workers where learning soldering, cable terminology and text based HTML.
I was on the college board of governors and the thing I learned is that no one knows what computer science even is. Sad part is that it was the same for a lot of the subjects taught.
adminofoz@lemmy.cafe 7 months ago
You know its bad when dude casually drops that he’s a drug dealer and we all collectively shrug, like yeah sounds about right.
Rookeh@startrek.website 7 months ago
There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’…
Anivia@feddit.org 7 months ago
We have all been conditioned by the media to think of drug dealers as bad people, but if you aren’t violent and only selling to consenting adults there is nothing inherently wrong or evil about it, other than braking the law. You are providing a valuable service to your community, like every other job.
Rakudjo@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I work in pharmacy and casually joke about being a legal drug dealer all of the time.
Not all drugs are street drugs!
M0oP0o@mander.xyz 7 months ago
Hey, its a new legal industry. And selling drugs lets me sleep much better at night compared to having to pretend whatever new bullshit they are pushing is not terrible.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 7 months ago
There is almost no ability to move up in any position in the industry
Change jobs every three years until you find a place that doesn’t suck.
The insanity of the industry is that employers will hire some schmuck with “10 years experience” on their resume for twice what they’re paying the guy who has worked at the firm for ten years.
lightnsfw@reddthat.com 7 months ago
Change jobs every three years until you find a place that doesn’t suck.
Most of my social circle is in tech and we’re spread across or have worked for basically every company in our city and that isn’t really a thing here.
M0oP0o@mander.xyz 7 months ago
Urgh, yeah it is just so bad. Most places don’t even have a possible job above yours to even potentially move to. Where I was they literally sold us to a competitor (then unsold me as they forgot about a few contracts) and then just removed all the positions above us or related to our department. I lost 3 layers of bosses one day (not that anyone noticed much). And then expect people to just happily go on and on and on.
The fact they could not hire anyone (I was the “new” guy for 10 years on my team) was down to really shitty hiring practices, that automated the requirements in such a way that the only people who could get an interview would have had to lie on their applications. They where desperately trying to say they wanted to hire more people but no one was “qualified”, meanwhile they froze pay for years (really showing that dood that was there for years how much they care).
Event_Horizon@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Hey man I hear you, so how much gor a quarter?
M0oP0o@mander.xyz 7 months ago
cheapest I have in store is $20, the fanciest is $40. All in CAD of course.
MehBlah@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I’m glad I never took it. Been employed in the field for thirty years.
alekwithak@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I was going to study computer science. Instead I got a general AA and got a helpdesk job. Then A+ and a better job and a Net+ and an even better job and I’m not well off by any means but my family has a roof over our heads and food on the table and what’s more I am still employed and don’t have student loans so it’s looking more and more like that’s the right call and the best way to get into tech.
stoly@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I’ve been saying that the market is oversaturated for YEARS now but this just enrages tech bros into insulting me personally. It’s very strange.
I always tell me CS/CE/Info students that they should focus on non profits, government agencies, etc. where at least employment will be stable.
KeenFlame@feddit.nu 7 months ago
I don’t get why they would insult you, but I have been hunted and not had to find jobs since I finished school, sometimes they fight each other. But it may be not quite the same job, i’m a coder turned game designer
stoly@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Industry surely has an impact.
mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.de 7 months ago
Oversaturated?!? Maybe if you’re a plebian bootcamp passionless 0.1x-er who hasn’t even contributed to multiple open source projects or founded at least 3 startups. Maybe you should try internalizing all PhD-worthy algorithms from the last 30 years to reproduce them on the spot from memory like I did, or else do you really even care about the craft??? You need to understand this industry is full of math olympiad prodigy coder geniuses who work 80 hours a week like me so yeah it’s competitive. Nothing oversaturated about that
/s
stoly@lemmy.world 7 months ago
That was a fantastic impression of reality. Well done.
Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
Well yeah, when the tech industry went through multiple waves of massive layoffs, that’s going to be the case in the short term as things shake out.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
And everyone and their dog is trying to get into tech. The industry is bound to get saturated eventually…
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I’d it’s already saturated if we’re looking at high unemployment in the sector.
Korne127@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Damn. Didn’t know about that at all. I’m genuinely glad the direction where I live (Germany) is the opposite, that way more people are needed and searched for than there is demand.
(I would have enough private projects without a job though lol.)febra@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Same issue here. My company is freezing any hiring this year. And next year won’t be looking good either. And to add on top of that, most big companies are outsourcing to Eastern Europe short-term because it’s cheaper, or directly to India, as was the case with Amazon Romania that laid off a bunch of its workforce and then hired back a few of them to make workshops for the people in India that are going to pick up their jobs to do the exact same thing.
Also the pay in the sector in Germany sucks ass. It’s really bad
YesButActuallyMaybe@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Thing is: there’s lots of vacant jobs in IT because of the unwillingness of adequate pay in Germany. Either the employers don’t see the value in hiring motivated people or the motivated people are unwilling to work for peanuts.
Entry level in Berlin was like ~36k for IHK Fachinformatiker für system integration. As a result my last company started to hire in Eastern Europe because no one could afford to live on that even in one of the cheapest cities. And it wasn’t a small company by a long shot. Just greedy bastards
Miaou@jlai.lu 7 months ago
Entry level at my company is 55k, in a much smaller city, in a field that’s not super competitive salary wise (i.e. not automotive industry), so I’d slap a huge YMMV on your comment.
philpo@feddit.org 7 months ago
Nope,same story here,just not as extreme: heise.de/…/Wirtschaftsinstitut-IT-Fachkraefte-sin…
Opisek@lemmy.world 7 months ago
From by experience, that doesn’t exactly equate to forced unemployment here. I do know of a friend from computer science in the UK who struggles to get past any interview, but I don’t perceive the market to me this hostile in Germany, even if not quite as vast as in the past.
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 7 months ago
0% of the fault lays on the students who got the degrees they were told were in demand by every single adult in ther life.
This was a coordinated push by our government and tech sector to drive down the cost of skilled labor by oversaturating the field.
LadyButterfly@reddthat.com 7 months ago
Yep and the parents and adults pushing them we’re often basing things on how it was FOR THEM. The job market changes constantly. I’ve got a worthless degree i deeply regret
damnedfurry@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I’ve got a worthless degree i deeply regret
Meanwhile, not far from this comment chain is someone claiming no one regrets getting their degree, lol.
derpgon@programming.dev 7 months ago
There I’d always free time to self educate. Being a programmer means constantly keeping up with the news, new technologies, and adapting to new standards to keep the code clean, maintainable, extendable, readable, and relatively fast.
VasovagalSyncope@lemmy.world 7 months ago
This is what we say now instead of expecting training and apprenticeship programs.
It’s propaganda
Tja@programming.dev 7 months ago
Well, then “their” plan backfired, because the cost is still as high as ever for senior and lead engineers, it’s just the enty level jobs that are ever rarer (and FAANG rarely hired entry level anyway).
innermachine@lemmy.world 7 months ago
When I started college I was in for biochem. Quickly realized there aren’t many jobs and most pay pretty shit, so I switched to computer science. Did some research and found that while there are good paying jobs, good luck finding them. Settled on a business degree (their the easiest of anything I was interested in, and I had a full ride that I didn’t want to waste dropping out). Graduated and now I’m a mechanic and make more than I would have if I stuck with my original bio degree. I also love what I do for a living despite the possibility of making more doing something else. Some fault is absolutely on the students for failing to do their own research, hopefully they have all learned a valuable lesson about being gullible. Always do your own research, and pick from various sources! At 18 you should not sign on for massive amounts of debt because “somebody said I’d get a good paying job later if I spend all the money I don’t have right now”. Not saying young adults weren’t fooled, but you cannot say 0% fault lies on the students. By that logic you should be a trump supporter because some boomer told u to be. The thing that differentiates and adult from a man-child is their ability to take responsibility for their own decisions. It’s not like you were FORCED to go to school.
stoly@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Settled on a business degree (their the easiest of anything I was interested in
I specifically avoid hiring students from business majors because they are only into the networking and not doing work lol.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 7 months ago
The one and only time I took compsci at a junior college just taught the basics of Office
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
An unfortunate but completely predictable result of the debt manufacturing industry.
pieman@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
Hearing advice on how to get into software dev made me I realise really don’t have enough passion for it. And given that its hyper competitive historically speaking, decided to move the adjacent job (that being a data analyst). Enjoying it so far. Now I just use my programming skills to just make cute little projects on my laptop, and of course a little bit for the data analyst stuff but.
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Shut up and get me my burger.
regedit@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
If businesses continue believing they can vibe code some intern into success while drop kicking talent to the curb to save a buck, those CS unemployment numbers will fall off like a lemming!
thedruid@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Yep. Been saying it for years because I was laid off over and over. Do not enter computer science.
Become an welder, electrician, etc. ANYTHING but a computer scientist
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
In case anyone is not aware:
Are you currently employed?
Have you actively sought a job in the last 4 weeks?
If the answer to both of those questions is ‘no’, then congrats, according to the BLS, you are not unemployed!
You just aren’t in the labor force, therefore you do not count as an unemployed worker.
So yeah, if you finally get fed up with applying to 100+ jobs a week or month, getting strung along and then ghosted by all of them…
( because they are fake job openings that are largely posted by companies so that they look like they look like they are expanding and doing well as a business )
… and you just give up?
You are not ‘unemployed’.
www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm#unemployed
You are likely a ‘discouraged worker’, who is also ‘not in the labor force’.
www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm#discouraged
…
Also, if you are 5 or 6 or 7 figures in student loan debt, and… you can only find a job as a cashier? waiter/waitress? door dash driver?
Congrats, you too are not unemployed, you are merely ‘underemployed’.
But also, if you have too many simultaneous low paying jobs… you may also be ‘overemployed’.
…
But anyway, none of that really matters if you do not make enough money to actually live.
In 2024, 44% of employed, full time US workers… did not make a living wage.
dayforce.com/…/2024-Living-Wage-Index-FINAL-1.pdf
(These guys work with MIT to calculate/report this because the BLS doesn’t.)
You’ve also got measures like LISEP…
forbes.com/…/stunning-unemployment-survey-says-mi…
Which concludes that 24.3% of Americans are ‘functionally unemployed’, by this metric which attempts to account for all the shortcomings of the BLS measures of the employment situation.
Using data compiled by the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $25,000 annually before taxes.
So basically this is a way to try to measure ‘doesnt have a job + has a poverty wage job’.
…
A more useful measure of the actual situation for college grads, in terms of ‘did it make any economic sense to get my degree?’ would be ‘are you currently employed in a job that substantially utilizes your specific college education, such that you likely could not perform that job without your specific college education?’
Something like that.
It sure would be neat if higher education in the US did not come with the shackles of student loan debt, then maybe people could get educated simply for the sake of getting educated, but, because it does, this has to be a cost benefit style question.
- sincerely, a not unemployed but technically ‘out of the the labor force’ econometrician.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 7 months ago
To the quote in the summary - might be because debugging dozens of layers of bullshit is hard. Anyway, debugging is about sitting for hours and reading logs and looking for weirdness, and looking at dumps, and what not. It’s a very different skill from “being the next Zuckerberg”. Also Zuckerberg is a psychologist most of all, his computing knowledge is not that unique. Network effect is more important than skill and knowledge here.
MITM0@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Let me guess AI
Velypso@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
I only have one thing to say to all the incredibly smug tech workers of the last 10-15 years.
Lol.
You know what? Lmao, even.
Archangel1313@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Give it a minute. Pretty soon, they’re going to need a lot of people to fix all the vibe-code that’s currently being spewed out by AI. That’ll be a monumental task.
turkalino@lemmy.yachts 7 months ago
The fairness meter at the bottom of the article is absurd. “Unfair left leaning” like yes, how dare the libtards use statistics to show how broken our economy is
GenoziderzKunt@lemmy.cafe 7 months ago
Shit what am I gonna do??