At least locally the CS market segregated into two halves — the haves and the have nots. The haves are doing ok. I just heard some ridiculous starting salaries yesterday.
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And honestly, that’s the way it is for a lot of these.
Luck of the draw sometimes which half you end up in, though, it feels like.
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Nurses still seem to be in high demand.
And while this one is not one of those “high paying” desired jobs many cc’ers pursue, those majoring in sports/turf management are often highly desired.
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The PE issue has been simmering for a while. I work pretty closely with a large PE firm that has a massive AUM and from what I heard many small and mid sized firms are in trouble because of the outsized valuations they bought companies at and the debt they took on to finance those deals.
@dfbdfb if this isn’t the golden age for CS then I don’t know what a golden age is. The amount of AI hiring right now is insane and as someone who is in the market for software engineers we are being outcompeted by young startups throwing literal 500k+ packages at new grads in the bay area. Yes, there was a period where people who were barely qualified were landing well paying jobs out of 12-week coding bootcamps a few years ago but in my mind that’s not the definition of the golden age.
Golden age to me is defined by the explosion of opportunities for new types of jobs and companies, and comparable growth in compensation - and I think by that count now is a golden age. However I do acknowledge that this is a very K shaped market and there are riches to be had by anyone who is good enough to take advantage.
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They are! But an increasing supply of nurses has meant that more and more of them are being pushed into positions where they’re hired as non-benefitted contractors or part-timers, and the benefits packages that historically came with the career have materially shrunk.
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Are facilities still bringing in nurses from overseas (or have the visa issues changed that?) Maybe its regional, but around here, there seem to be strong job opportunities for newly minted RNs and specialty nurses.
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Yes and yes.
And part of the problem in discussing job prospects in a thread like this is that all job markets are discipline-specific but still interrelated and (very, very nearly) all job markets are regional.
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There is luck involved in these things, but not the way we normally think of luck. It is asymmetric. You can mess up the interview process while still being competent, but there are very few false positives given how rigorous the process is for some of these jobs.
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The problem from where I sit is that it’s not two halves. It’s 80th percentile and up- and their doing anywhere from OK to fantastic. But the tranches below that- yikes.
There is a huge Apple store near me which is a “destination” employer for empty-nester women. You have a lot of flexibility, the work is fun, if you can operate your own phone they’ll train you to do everything else, and it’s in a mall with some nice stores and discounts for other retailers employees. So I know a lot of these women who are working side by side with new CS grads-- and their stories are grim. Applied to 500 CS jobs. 1 interview, dinged. Applied to 350 CS jobs, never gets past the resume screen. For a 55 year old who left full time employment once the second kid was born it’s a fantastic arrangement- plus you get to tell everyone that work at the Genius Bar, ergo, you’re now a genius.
For a 23 year old trying to launch? Working part time retail (because no matter what they call you, that’s what it is… one step up from folding sweaters at Old Navy) with no benefits? And a CS degree that can’t even get you an IT support role at a bank or credit card company (i.e. not CS but at least it’s fulltime with health care)???
So I agree with your have and have not. But the have nots are a really large chunk. And for the most part, they graduated from colleges and universities which have relatively new CS programs, so there isn’t decades of experience in Career Services to help navigate the new reality.
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I agree it’s not 50/50. But it’s not 80/20. I asked my son who just graduated from Rutgers just this past year, and he said probably 50% of his CS class has some job, and another 20% are in grad school (normally 10%). So I see the stressed students at something like 40%. But the tail of the distribution is small — I don’t disagree.
Rutgers is a flagship university with deep chops in CS and applied math.
Take a look at a directional state U with a relatively new CS department and students who came in weaker than your son’s classmates-- not as well prepared, less math and more “I love tinkering with computers”, and you’ll see a divide much more stark than what your son reports. I would expect Rutgers to have strong results- fantastic faculty.
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There is a wide spectrum of quality. The major is very large at Rutgers. The faculty quality is decent. Faculty attention is medium — I mean in terms of how quickly graded hw and exams are returned etc. Job outcomes are medium. Level of satisfaction — medium. I am not giving you a blanket — it is a flagship, therefore it can’t be bad judgment. There will be all kinds of nuance if you ask a student who recently went there. I am not saying there aren’t weaker schools. I am saying whatever Rutgers is, it is less than enough in hindsight. If we knew everything we knew, we would have thought very hard to see whether there are other choices — and maybe there aren’t, unless you go to a public school that is visibly better(there wasn’t one available), or to a private school (a better choice was not available).
Perhaps because the last downturn in computing was before many current college students were born?
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l am not aware of any colleges with such stats that have a new CS program. However, there are numerous stats of CS outcomes for students attending relatively less selective colleges. The general pattern is the overwhelming portion are employed or in grad school. However, they generally aren’t getting the $500k packages that a different poster mentioned or working at Google, Apple, Facebook, etc. Instead they are often working at local companies in the region, in a CS related role. Average earnings are higher than most majors at the college, but not what posters on this forum would probably consider high earnings. I’ll use U of Oklahoma 2025 grads as an example. Stats were captured 6 months after graduating and have a ~80% knowledge rate.
All Majors – 83% success (employed or grad school), Ave Salary = $63k
Computer Science – 91% success (employed or grad school), Ave Salary = $86k
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30-40% unemployment rate at graduation is not a good overall outcome, particularly for a strong flagship university.
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30-40% unemployed now, 4 months after graduation.
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That seems really high! Is that anecdotal from your child or from Rutger’s first destination survey? Purdue reports 10.85% still looking/unemployed for CS grads.
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It is anecdotal.
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If you have ok grades, no real summer internships, and a below average to average network, it’s completely plausible (even probable) that you’d be unemployed after graduation until you broaden your search to smaller companies/lower salaries or take something completely unrelated to your field.
Even some of the best students have to network like crazy to create opportunities.
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One thing worth considering: Students graduating this past May were hit hard by the covid shutdowns.
I know that my C23 (graduated a year early) had serious issues trying to get an internship, and had several friends who had internships outright canceled plus places that usually have internships simply not offering them that first summer back from the shutdown.
So yeah, we can point to students not having done internships, but even beyond cases like students who have to work a paying summer job instead of an unpaid internship to survive (unpaid internships are less of an issue in comp sci, but they are in most fields), students who recently graduated may simply have not had the opportunity.
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