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Student developers were polled via 80 spring 2016 hackathons to asses how they feel about their career options. Some of the key finding were:
- 83% of students said they were looking for fulfilling careers, rather than simply for jobs.
- Students plan to stay an average of 2.9 years at their first full-time job.
- Students predict that they'll stay at later jobs for 5 years on average.
- Students expect to earn between $70–150K right out of school.
Details of the Devpost study can be found here.
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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else
follows in the same way.
-- Alan J. Perlis
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2016, @03:22PM
83% of students said they were looking for fulfilling careers, rather than simply for jobs.
Try being an electrician or a plumber. Landscaping? Heck, save up some capital and buy a fishing boat.
Students plan to stay an average of 2.9 years at their first full-time job.
Probably about right if you change careers NOW. Otherwise, you're going to get shitcanned after you've been there about a year.
Students predict that they'll stay at later jobs for 5 years on average.
Again, get a skilled trade.
Students expect to earn between $70–150K right out of school.
Pipefitters, machinists, and plumbers seem to do all right in this income range. Won't happen overnight, say true. But you'll be learning a practical skill that will always be in demand. It can't be off-shored at least. I also guarantee you that you'll be able to live somewhere that $40k right out of school will make you feel pretty well off as a single young man. Plus, unlike software, you can point to what you did at the end of the day and say, "This is what I contributed to make the world a better place today than it was yesterday."
No, you're not going to become a tech billionaire. You're not Zuckerfuck. You're not a special snowflake. You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.
Get a tangible skill and people will understand why you're needed and valuable. Stay in software and prepare to be a "genius" or "wizard" while nobody quite knows why you're there and why there aren't more cisfemales in your profession and why are you always making everything so technical when the computer on the Enterprise just works?! Why can't it be as easy as Google?! Misogynerd!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2016, @03:32PM
Ahh, I see what you're doing here. You're in the tech field and you want to drive the competition out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2016, @05:00PM
Damn, you caught me!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday May 19 2016, @03:35PM
Students are fucking morons, what do you expect? If they knew anything they wouldn't be in school still. They'd be shining up their welding chops so they could rake in $150K/yr while only working about three out of every seven days. Take the quite nice and extremely reliable paycheck instead of trying to play the job lottery, dipshits. It's not random; those jobs are filled by people who are objectively better than you. You're not going to luck into a job that makes you millions, ever.
I blame the parents for telling their kids they are special and can be anything they want. They're not and they can't. Only one out of every thirty thousand or so of them are even as smart as I am and I code under two other guys that regularly make me feel like a dubmass and aren't making insano cash from their mad skillz.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 19 2016, @03:56PM
Yeah, someone go ahead and call me the grammar/spelling nazi. I just couldn't resist, LMAO.
I guess that's someone really, really massive doing dubstep? Dubmass.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 20 2016, @12:27AM
Meh, even the truly awesome typo every now and then.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2016, @04:42PM
I was hired right out if college a year ago. Have you considered that since 80% of these students want fulfilling jobs they chose a field they like instead if whatever offered the best money?
Maybe I could earn more as a welder (after apprenticing for jackshit for years), but I don't like welding. I like programing and playing with new tech.
Admittedly their salary expectations are a little high, but I'm still within the lower bound. So it's not unrealistic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2016, @05:39PM
Admittedly their salary expectations are a little high
A little? You think?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday May 19 2016, @08:13PM
Well, maybe they factored in inflation by the time they'll leave school. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 20 2016, @02:31PM
Does it factor what school they are from and where they plan on living? $120-150K seems reasonable for Stanford in Silicone Valley
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday May 19 2016, @08:10PM
I knew the first dot com bubble was going to burst when I heard people right out of school were demanding desks made out of Lego.
I decided I was still interested in computer science, even though there would be few jobs in the field.
I think my interests have drifted to computer engineering since then though (despite the lack of jobs in the field).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2016, @08:27PM
Considering that most of them are know-nothing morons, their salary expectations are way too high.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 20 2016, @12:33AM
There's no such thing as a fulfilling job. You will always work for an asshole. If you think your job is an exception because your boss isn't an asshole, start polishing your resume up because that company is going under due to poor management. Go for the money so you at least have something to show for it.
Seriously though, fulfilling jobs can only be held by exceptionally well adjusted individuals. And they're extremely rare. It's not the job that makes it fulfilling, it's your attitude.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by fishybell on Thursday May 19 2016, @03:43PM
Serenity now...serenity now
(Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday May 19 2016, @10:49PM
You shouldn't say that, it's unhealthy. I think "hoochie momma" is a healthier choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2016, @04:19PM
Pipefitters, machinists, and plumbers seem to do all right in this income range.
Of course there's that whole apprentice/journeyman period where they're not earning anywhere near that.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by vux984 on Thursday May 19 2016, @05:06PM
Of course there's that whole apprentice/journeyman period where they're not earning anywhere near that.
On the flipside they don't have that whole university period where they are net negative the whole time unless mom and dad are helping them float.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 20 2016, @12:25AM
Journeymen make extremely good wages. Even apprentices, who by definition barely know their ass from a hole in the ground, make more than the average schlub their age does. Contractors? They don't necessarily even get wages. They are the ones who pay wages and quite often own the company.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snotnose on Thursday May 19 2016, @06:43PM
I agree. Looks like the 1%ers are doing their best to import cheap software labor and kick the American workers to the curb.
Another advantage of knowing a skilled trade is you can easily relocate. Everybody needs plumbers and electricians. Try moving to some little town and getting a job as a software architect.
Relationship status: Available for curbside pickup.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2016, @08:23PM
Not even I know why most software developers decided to be software developers, or why they were even allowed to get a degree; they have no aptitude for software development whatsoever. But I guess mediocrity or worse is tolerated at most colleges and universities. How sad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 20 2016, @02:10AM
because most colleges weed out most of the good programmers by making them take useless math classes that have nothing to do with programming.
hate to break it to academia, but you do not need ANY calculus to be a programmer.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Saturday May 21 2016, @02:13AM
Not even I know why most software developers decided to be software developers
In the late 70's I had a serious video game habit and bought a TRS-80 in hopes of saving some money. I quickly learned I'd rather program the thing than play games on it. At the time I was in college for an EE, third semester I changed to a computer science degree. At work my job was to QC boards and fix them as needed. Wrote Space Invaders for our 1553 analyzer, marketing found it and started showing it at trade shows. Helped that the version they grabbed I hadn't yet implemented the aliens shooting at you, but you could shoot them. Engineering found out about it, brought me over.
Ended up with a BS in Math, was an embedded software engineer until a few years ago when I went to work for a startup. They folded, and I learned companies won't interview people in their 50s, let alone hire them. So I "retired" at 52.
FWIW, my weekly budget was $30 for video games. After buying the TRS-80 it went down to maybe $20/week, but my salary bump more than made up for it.
Relationship status: Available for curbside pickup.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday May 19 2016, @11:23PM
I also guarantee you that you'll be able to live somewhere that $40k right out of school will make you feel pretty well off as a single young man.
Its worth quoting wikipedia
The overall median personal income for all individuals over the age of 18 was $24,062
And no small fraction of those poor bastards are trying to raise an entire family, so as a single guy yeah times will be pretty good.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Friday May 20 2016, @01:26AM
Every individual above 18 usually means mom and dad. So, median family has 48.1k annual income. With 40k raising a family is below median.
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