Is Computer Science better than engineering these days

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>If only it was this simple. I live in a million people city (give or take) in fly-over country and it’s not like we’re busting at the seams with tech companies expanding and the like. Besides, once you have children, a mortgage, and related financial sinks, and two incomes, it’s not quite this easy to relocate. To top this, once you reach the point of having a really nice house, there is absolutely ZERO to be gained financially by relocating to a more job-friendly part of the country. I’ve talked to a couple of companies and figure I’d need twice my salary to live in the Bay area, plus twice the wife’s salary to be able to afford a similar house, private lessons, and the like.</p>

<p>Put another way, it’s not worth for me to pay $3k for a townhouse per month so I can see Google across the street. Not if I don’t have to due to some catastrophe at least. I visit once a year for business, chill out with my coworkers at our Silicon Valley ‘innovation center’ (LOL), and so on. A coworker who does live across Google in said $3k/month townhouse has changed 4 jobs in 5 years, which is nice if you’re 30-35, but not quite the thing to do with college tuitions and the like breathing on your neck.</p>

<p>So, what’s Turbo to do?</p>

<p>Simple. Find a niche, stick to it, find a manager you like, stick to him/her like the creature from the Alien movie series, and go from there. So far I’m on year 15 with the same guy. Scary. At year 15 I can get away with lots of things (working very flexible hours at work being the primary one, and picking assignments and travel the other). Money is decent, and assuming the guy does not have a piano fall on him or some such I’m good. </p>

<p>But, situations like these are exceedingly rare. Like finding a good mother-in-law. </p>

<p>On the other side of the ring is Mrs. T. She must have worked for every loser manager there ever was in IT, and then some. Textbooks would be written for business schools with the mishaps and idiocy she has encountered. But hey, if she has hubby steadily working, she can play the game. And did she ever. She’s now on job, ummm, 7 or 8 in 24-25 years, excluding two stints of a decade each. She found an awesome job with an awesome manager, decent money, and no office politics (the bane of her previous 24 years. Hard to play office politics when everyone works from home :)). </p>

<p>Neither of us is a spring chicken, but we figure at 53 we have another dozen years to go. We’re both preparing for a jump to the Washington DC area in 3 years once DD2 flies off the nest. Instead of watching her favorite shows on TV (Lifetime Movie Network, eek) she attends online classes for additional certifications in her line of work (business analytics) and I’m coding cloud applications like there’s no tomorrow.</p>

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<p>H1-B visas get paid the same as US workers, there is a shortage of qualified software engineers.</p>

<p>Kindly read Dr. Matloff’s work in [Norm</a> Matloff’s H-1B Web Page: cheap labor, age discrimation, offshoring](<a href=“http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html]Norm”>Norm Matloff's H-1B Web Page: cheap labor, age discrimation, offshoring) and get back to us. I used to read his work before there ever was a web (on gopher :)) and it’s still as relevant as it was 20 years ago.</p>

<p>I do not mean this the bad way, but magical thinking as in the quote above reminds me of my lectures in Safety Engineering. The prof, a renowned consultant to the insurance industry on accidents, once gave us a very analytical lecture about the thought processes of young males involved in risky behaviors (pick your X-games sport :)). He said that basically, nothing that one tells them about the particular risky behavior has an effect simply because their minds are not receptive to the idea that risk exists to begin with. Like driver’s ed and smoking films, no matter how many broken bones and tarred lungs we see in health ed, it does not matter. We’ll be immortal.</p>

<p>I see the same sentiment here. One is young, has a good degree from a great school and a great job, and all is great, sunny and 72F. The ‘future’ is next week’s Lake Tahoe trip. </p>

<p>Again, I apologize if this comes out as offensive, it certainly is not meant to be. But believing that there really are 126k jobs and we have a shortage of qualified software engineers is magical thinking ([Magical</a> thinking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking]Magical”>Magical thinking - Wikipedia)) at its best.</p>

<p>In case you’re not familiar with my personal story, I am speaking from personal experience regarding H1’s. I was one and most of my friends were too. I have hired many H1B’s also…</p>

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<p>I am not giving you “magical thinking”. Are you telling me that these job posts are fake?</p>

<p>[Computer</a> Science Jobs, Employment | Indeed.com](<a href=“http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=“computer+science”]Computer”>http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=“computer+science”)</p>

<p>Go to monster.com as well if you want, I am showing you facts not opinions or what I “think” about the industry. This are REAL job postings. Also something from 20 years ago doesn’t prove anything today. The software market was not as good as it is today at that time</p>

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<p>Re: #81</p>

<p>I.e. you chose to go to and stay in an area with limited choice of employers. No surprise if you cannot find better ones.</p>

<p>Actually, your experience is an example of the general condition that capital is more mobile than labor. When you realize that, the whole fuss about H-1B visas and the like is of little relevance – the alternative if immigration of skilled workers is restricted more is more offshore outsourcing, which is worse.</p>

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<p>Lightnin, many individual CS jobs are advertised multiple times through different agencies, so one job may generate five or ten job postings. You also seem to have the opinion that all managers are competent, experienced, and rational, and will understand when outsourcing doesn’t make sense. That isn’t the case.</p>

<p>I have 30 years of programming experience, have hired H-1Bs, and have lots of friends and co-workers on H-1Bs. I’m all for H-1Bs who truly have unique and advanced skills, but I’ve seen the program badly abused by businesses that knew how to take advantage of loopholes to hire cheap, entry-level programmers. It was especially bad during the dot-com crash, where I saw too many American programmers laid off while H-1Bs took their place. It happened at a company I was working for in the early 2000s. (It eventually went out of business.)</p>

<p>It’s very easy and inexpensive for companies to go through the motions of pretending to look for US workers to fill open jobs, all the while fully intending to hire H-1Bs in place of American workers. It’s also easy to fudge salary figures to make it look like H-1Bs are being paid as much as US workers, when in fact they aren’t. What H-1Bs actually do is decrease average salaries for everyone.</p>

<p>On this issue, I would give more credibility to people who have seen how the H-1B program operates firsthand, rather than people who don’t have the requisite experience to understand how numbers can be easily manipulated and taken out of context.</p>

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<p>Hello all. I have read this forums for a few years now and just now made an account. I’ve been reading these forums for mostly entertainment purposes and enjoyed it while I did my business in the Latrine.</p>

<p>A full disclaimer: I’m an Electrical Engineering Junior. The opening post compared Computer Science to Engineering. Then the OP compares computer science with each individual degree within Engineering. First off, I believe this is a poor comparison of apples to oranges. Computer Science implies a broad assortment of jobs just as if you type in “Engineering.” If you compare apples to apples, Engineering wins 2 to 1. </p>

<p>[Engineering</a> Jobs, Employment | Indeed.com](<a href=“http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=“Engineering”&l=]Engineering”>http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=“Engineering”&l=)</p>

<p>Also if you click on many of the CS jobs, they take almost any technical degree. (Engineering or math). </p>

<p>Yet another flaw pertains to my first point, the broadness of the term “Computer Science.” Most of the jobs I seen ( went up to page about 15) was mostly instructor jobs. But if you type in “Software Engineer” you get bout 28,000 jobs. </p>

<p>Now computer science as a degree is just a degree in the theory of computing. Not saying it isn’t challenging or difficult ( which it very much is). The day to day task you will complete will lean more towards the coding aspect of the computer science and not so much theory. </p>

<p>Just my two cents. I think if you analyze the word play a little bit you don’t see much difference using Indeed as a metric.</p>

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<p>There are plenty of jobs around where I live. We are not Santa Clara or Beaverton but we’re not Morgan City, LA either. I chose to stay in the same position for all these years because I do what I like - write code and design user interfaces for cool stuff. </p>

<p>I had opportunities to join respected west coast companies for fancy titles like “senior software architect” only to learn that the position is largely one of herding H1-B’s and ‘remote team members’. I will pass. </p>

<p>I have no grudge towards the h1-b’s of waves 1 or 2 or 3. Wave 1 were all IIT or similar and are now raking in serious money and accolades, deservedly so.</p>

<p>Wave 2, the big national schools, similar. </p>

<p>Even wave 3, heck, Osmania University, let’s hear it!! At least those dudes came to the USA and toiled for a graduate degree…</p>

<p>Wave 4 is not those 3. Wave 4 are the red-shirts in Star Trek that get eaten by the monster right upon landing on the hostile planet. Parts Unknown schools of very dubious quality, doctored creds, very low costs, and little output. Quit every six months, rinse, repeat.</p>

<p>If this is what mobility of capital and labor brings us, beam me up.</p>

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<p>The comparison to each individual engineering is the way to go, because an EE cannot apply to a civil eng job. Although, you are right about software engineering(included with “engineering” as well). I know Indeed search is not really accurate. CS is more than just theory of computing, it is really broad actually</p>

<p>@turbo, I really doubt that the h1-b is as bad as you say. I really love coding and design too, I have never been in industry but you are clearly exaggerating with the h1-b visa</p>

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<p>You have much to learn, I’m afraid. I have a couple of backup disks full of Mrs. T’s job-hunting expeditions, and experience managing her job searches (I know, I’m a nice guy… she cooks great food and all that :)). </p>

<p>The vast number of jobs that surprisingly go unfilled (necessitating cries for more graduates) is not a new phenomenon. It was 1984 or 1985 where a number of companies in the Valley were laying off people like there’s no tomorrow, yet if you believe the ads, they were ‘hiring’. LOL x 10^2</p>

<p>In reality, it was more like a eulogy + job posting for a famous statistician in the late 80’s Mrs. T. ran into in the American Statistical Association magazine. Page 1 reported the passing of some famous statistician, and page 86, yes sir, his employer is hiring for the position…</p>

<p>There are many reasons companies advertise open positions even when they’re cutting faster than a teenager playing Fruit Ninja (awful game btw). ■■■■■■■■, resume collecting, saving face, collecting intelligence from the competition, hiring away from the competition, purple squirreling, getting LCA for H1B’s (easy to spot), justifying the hiring of an internal or external candidate, and so on. Believing that there really are that many positions open really takes a bit of magical thinking. </p>

<p>Twenty years ago, hard as it may seem to believe, it was a LOT easier to get a job. Versionitis did not exist. You knew Oracle, or C, or Unix, that was it. Today if you don’t have the exact version number down to minor release and build sequence, the not-so-magical HR resume scanner will reject you. Period. </p>

<p>Things were great all the way to the dot com bust and then everything broke loose. Companies were basically taken to the cleaners paying $60/hr in 2000 for script kiddies and Oracle hacks (Mrs. T. was billing $55/hr for serious Oracle and web work back then, and the Turbo estate is living proof of what we did with the money :)). Then, 2001 came along, the markets crashed, and all of a sudden good C++ coders in Lithuania cost $10-15/hr…</p>

<p>I would say what happened next was political… The waves of resident (US based) H1-B’s (wave 3) never delivered the cost benefits, because of a variety of reasons, so they, too, went bye bye, to be replaced by off-shore resources (wave 4). </p>

<p>Wave 3, unfortunately, had been here for years. Many of Mrs. T’s buddies were here for 5-6 years and had the deep skills needed. Wave 4, well… Memorize the “how to pass Informatica interview questions”, get a certification, and you, too, can be an ETL developer!</p>

<p>Any how, I’m dragging this, but the bottom line is that those jobs really don’t exist outside the heads of executives who want the excuse. They are as real as the 1.7 million jobs in this report:</p>

<p>[Almost</a> 1.7 Million Cloud-Related Jobs Went Unfilled in 2012: Estimate - Forbes](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2012/12/21/almost-1-7-million-cloud-related-jobs-went-unfilled-in-2012-estimate/]Almost”>Almost 1.7 Million Cloud-Related Jobs Went Unfilled in 2012: Estimate)</p>

<p>600,000 openings for IT/network professionals by 2015? Is this for wealthy households that, after having outsourced lawn care, child care, and house cleaning, will outsource their home’s network management too?</p>

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<p>Sure they can. For example if an EE has a job working with a contractor on large job sites overseeing the installation done by electricians and has a PE he can do a CE job. A an engineering degree isn’t as limiting as you think. Comp sci couldn’t get many Engineering jobs but Engineers can get CS jobs. EE’s and CompE’s tend to have the EE department apart of the CS apartment.</p>

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<p>We’ve already reached the limit for FY 2014. 65,000 + another 20,000 with advance degree exceptions (Masters or better).</p>

<p>[USCIS</a> - USCIS Reaches FY 2014 H-1B Cap](<a href=“http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=5051f359827dd310VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=e7801c2c9be44210VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD]USCIS”>http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=5051f359827dd310VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=e7801c2c9be44210VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD)</p>

<p>It’s an impressive sight, one day coming to work to fine 40+ H1-B’s waiting in the lobby to be signed in…</p>

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<p>My story repertoire is vaster (is that a word?) than most because of my Honorary Indian status, bestowed upon me by my all-India team members. I was a team leader from '91 to '93 and had 4 Indian team members, all H-1’s to Green Card. (all Wave 2). I can recall stories that should probably be banned because of hazardous laughing… </p>

<p>One of the 4 (the Osmania guy) got into some very new - at the time - technologies, moved back to India, and is a senior VP in a thousand person company. Another is VP in a well known Chicago telecom. The third is an awesome coder (always was) in N.Carolina somewhere and the fourth, the most un-Indian of them all, is busy partying and working for Intel in Beaverton as a manager. </p>

<p>If the H1’s we were getting were those guys, or guys of similar quality, I’d drive to the airport and pick them up myself (did that, many times - try getting a suitcase full of stainless steel cooking utensils thru airport security…). The problem is beginning in 2001-2002 or so, we got Wave 4, and that’s it.</p>

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<p>About as impressive as seeing the 40 year old HR manager openly flirting with a new late 20’s H1-B guy (doing his check-in paperwork in the lab with the rest of us watching) who did look like straight out of Bollywood.</p>

<p>The rest of the lab pretty much stopped working and eavesdropped in :)</p>

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<p>Actually, the H-1B employees got laid off also. The tech bubble crash coincided with the rise of the business fad of offshore outsourcing, when companies rushed to outsource as much as they could, even when it did not make good business sense (and before realizing that going for the cheapest subcontractor did not get IIT grads). Offshore outsourcing certainly still exists (since capital is more mobile than labor), though after enough companies got burned by bad offshore outsourcing decisions, it is not done as recklessly as before.</p>

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<p>In other words, while in 2000 era outsourcing was done very ad-hoc, with little ‘science’ behind it, today’s outsourcing is a lot more ‘scientific’ with very defined lines of communication, processes, responsibilities, etc.</p>

<p>The irony is that the larger, more well known US based outsource houses pay a LOT less than the smaller specialized firms, and this makes the job-hopping all but certain. Mrs. T is on her third set of ‘resources’ in a year and a half…</p>

<p>I’m working with a pair of guys from Infosys locally and they’re pretty good, not quite IIT level but Wave 2 certainly. Mrs. T. has had pretty good luck with TCS (maybe Wave 2.5-3) but these guys were here 5+ years…</p>

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<p>Isn’t the dirty little secret that Infosys and their ilk are not so much outsourcing as insourcing cheap foreign labor using the H-1B and L-1 visas?</p>

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<p>Now isn’t that another cost of outsourcing (whether domestic or offshore), particularly if it is done choosing the cheapest at all costs (the better contract employees are most likely to leave the cheap shops)?</p>

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<p>Apparently, some of their business model involves trying to hog the H-1B visas, leaving far fewer for companies to directly hire the top talent that the H-1B visas are supposed to be for (and whom companies do hire directly at good pay levels on H-1B visas).</p>

<p>[The</a> great H1B visa farce - The Hindu](<a href=“http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/blogs/blog-hypertext/article4631044.ece]The”>http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/blogs/blog-hypertext/article4631044.ece)</p>

<p>Also, IT (managing computers, as opposed to designing them and their software) is probably not an appropriate use of H-1B visas anyway. But it does seem that a lot of people confuse IT and CS.</p>

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<p>“Actually, the H-1B employees got laid off also.”</p>

<p>There’s some truth to that. Where I worked, we had grown to about 100 employees and contractors, and when the dot-com era came tumbling down, about 75 of those got laid off over the course of several months, both US citizens and H-1Bs. </p>

<p>Those laid off were replaced in-house by a contract programming team of about 20 very inexpensive Indian H-1Bs. It was one of those deals where you hired a pre-existing team of programmers from a consulting company, as opposed to going out and hiring individual programmers. That’s when my view of he H-1B program went from positive to negative. Of course it was a miserable failure, and the whole company folded. </p>

<p>Back around 2000, when I worked at Charles Schwab, I had a boss who only hired H-1Bs, even though we interviewed plenty of very qualified US citizens. (That boss wasn’t the one who hired me.)</p>

<p>I’d like to see something like a 100,000 H-1B limit, with H-1Bs first going to those who get Ph.Ds and Masters degrees from accredited, vetted US universities, with the rest going to those who get bachelors degrees from US universities. I don’t know if that reaches 100,000, but only then should H-1Bs be given to those who haven’t otherwise qualified.</p>

<p>I also think there should be something like a $20,000 fee for each H-1B.</p>

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<p>As much as we talk about H1-B’s, tho, the trick is to ask how many US workers would put off golf for a weekend or three and study on their own time and dime to learn the new stuff. In the late 90’s and early 2000’s a lot of new stuff came along (n-tier, .NET, SAP, web development) and in the mid 2000’s+ another lot of new stuff came along (ETL, data mining, reporting) and the last couple years yet another lot (Big Data, Analytics, Cloud). </p>

<p>H-1B’s won big because of actual working experience (or ‘experience’) with said technologies and super low cost of training back home. Go take a series of SAP classes and see what money we’re talking about vs. taking them in Farawaystan. Is it any surprise that the only very decent book on Informatica is written by an Indian Professor and can only be mail ordered from India? (a prized possession of Mrs. T :)). </p>

<p>Maybe there’s a learning moment here for US workers, yea, it’s nice to play golf every weekend or ballroom dancing or what not, but at some point COBOL is not going to cut it, and on the job or employer paid training went the way of the dodo bird. Do a Google of ‘Informatica Interview Questions’ and see what I’m talking about. Without prepping like you’re going to the Olympics it’s a lost cause.</p>

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<p>Turbo93, I don’t find it to be the case that people on H-1Bs are more up on the latest technology than American workers. I find most H-1Bs with x years of experience to be relatively equivalent to US programmers with x years of experience.</p>

<p>As I said before, I’m all for H-1Bs who are among the best and the brightest, but I’ve seen too many inexperienced H-1Bs cost better-qualified Americans jobs simply because the H-1Bs were cheaper and more submissive to management. That wasn’t what the H-1B program was supposed to be about.</p>

<p>The people I saw replaced certainly weren’t old Cobol programmers. They were Java programmers in their 20s and 30s, back when Java was really hot.</p>