<p>So I've read that the 2002 CS job market was bad for CS graduates. But just how bad was it? Was it so bad that CS grads couldn't get programming jobs and had to retail jobs? </p>
<p>Is it likely that the high demand for CS graduates will go away and be a repeat of 2002 anytime soon?</p>
<p>Unfortunately, few career surveys at universities seem to go back that far.</p>
<p>The one for MIT is here: <a href=“http://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/graduation02.pdf[/url]”>http://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/graduation02.pdf</a></p>
<p>Students in course 6 (electrical engineering and computer science) appeared to do well, but a look at the list of job titles and employers indicates that many of them went to alternative jobs (finance and the like, given that MIT is a target for such recruiting).</p>
<p>But, anecdotally, the job situation was really bad in Silicon Valley, when small companies were folding every day and big companies were having massive layoffs. But that may be because the tech bubble inflated the most there – there may have been less a bubble but also less of a downturn in other areas (e.g. DC area with lots of government and related work).</p>
<p>As far as the future goes, the future is not necessarily predictable, although the kind of outlandish business plans that startups were being funded for during the bubble do not seem to be as common now. But the massive influx of students into CS majors (Berkeley and Stanford are now seeing 700+ student enrollments in the introductory CS course for majors) may be worrisome if there is even a smaller downturn.</p>
<p>The high demand is for people with the right skills, right pedigree, and right connections. I am not sure the demand is there in general.</p>
<p>2002 was a free for all for several reasons. Dot com companies were disappearing, lots of existing IT or CS workers were marginalized (see below) and thus unemployable due to old skills; all the same, outsourcing was growing by leaps and bounds. Add the recession and you have it made.</p>
<p>The old skills issue was by far the most critical issue. I gave a prophetic quote in the late 90’s… “Dot Net and the Web was responsible for sending more IT / CS workers to work Radio Shack and Best Buy jobs than any outsourcing”. The late 90’s was when N-tier client server (blah blah web based) stuff begin to spread, and if you had your experience in the crud that passed for technology back then you were golden. Of course, nobody had the experience so if one wanted a .NET or ASP or what have you coder there was only one place to get them, and it was not Kansas City. </p>
<p>That time also became the beginning of versionitis and the search for purple squirrels. Mere decent knowledge of an arcane technology would not cut it. You had to be an expert (as confirmed by the myriad of online test companies that conveniently enough popped up, or kangaroo court interviews where one could and would be asked footnote questions), code-writing interviews, and the like. Interestingly enough, offshore resources were rarely subjected to such inquisitions, as the contract houses that sponsored them by the thousands convinced everyone that indeed, the City of Mumbai Municipal Water Company did employ thousands of C++ programmers who all decided to seek H1B visas and move to Kansas City…</p>
<p>Fast forward ten years and I don’t think we have learned much. The graduates from top schools have proven they can learn quickly and thus get employed in decent to good jobs; graduates from good schools like flagship states, well, not so sure, not without knowledge of very specific tools and techniques that are usually well beyond the scope of college CS courses (I see an opportunity for a book here, “Algorithms and Data Structures in PHP” :). </p>
<p>Bottom line - it was bad, and I don’t think it has gotten much better.</p>
<p>Anectodal, but I remember reading a Quora answer that noted Harvard pretty much didn’t have a Computer Science program the year after the dot com crash.</p>
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<p>Your location may have a lot to do with the lack of opportunities that you see even in good times.</p>
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<p>CS enrollment did drop for several years after the crash. Of course, those who started in CS during the crash graduated during the recovery.</p>
<p>For any field with significant industry cycles that are different from general economic cycles, you can probably find the change in the number of graduates echoing the change in the number of jobs four years earlier.</p>
<p>I had a job opening in 2002 or 2003 (don’t remember exactly since it has been a while). I believe HR posted the job on some job boards like craigslist. I got something like > 400 resumes for one opening in a couple days. As a hiring manager, I was overwhelmed by that since I really didn’t have time to go through all that. At the peak of the bubble like 1999 or 2000, I would get something like > 20 resumes in a couple days for a job opening posted.</p>
<p>Now the job market is pretty good. If you are good, college graduate or experienced, you will get a job.</p>
<p>Of course, keep in mind that most CS jobs are concentrated in several areas. If you are not in those areas, you might see different demand.</p>
<p>No one knows the future. CS has became a very popular major in the past couple years.</p>
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<p>That is no doubt the case, but keep in mind that just like it happened in the 1980’s with New England, even tho we in fly-over country don’t have much of a tech industry, ultimately if we stop buying tech, the tech-happy states get hosed over time as well…</p>
<p>It’s not like the defense industry where there’s a guaranteed buyer at the other end. If Oracle and Microsoft are producing good stuff and we’re stuck in no-growth mode here in the Midwest and don’t buy, guess what? </p>
<p>I remember hearing when I worked in Detroit that Digital Equipment’s biggest customer was none other than General Motors. How long did DEC survive after GM hit bottom in '91?</p>
<p>Your area might not crash as hard, but your area also misses out on the gains. Seems like you have made the choice to have mediocre job prospects all the time to avoid the occasional harder crash.</p>
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<p>Every industry gets nailed at some point or another. Aerospace and defense got hammered in the 90’s when the defense budget was slashed.</p>
<p>The 2002 CS job market was the worst one I’ve seen in 30 years. Between 2001 and 2004, my hourly rate went from $115/hr to $75/hr to $65/hr. You’d read stories about programmers who were working at companies for no salary, just so they’d have something on their resume.</p>
<p>Lots of Americans, green card holders, and highly-paid H-1Bs got laid off, and were replaced with low-paid H-1Bs. There was also a huge wave of jobs that were offshored. Many programmers left the industry and never came back. (Lots of them went into real estate, and when the mortage crisis hit in 2008, they couldn’t get back into high-tech.)</p>
<p>Things seemed to start recovering around 2005.</p>
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<p>Our area (large midwestern city) did really well from the early mid 1990’s till 2001, crashed, burned, and never recovered. The large employers outsourced everything to oblivion, the smaller companies never expanded, and the few brave tech sector pioneers either went under or were bought out. </p>
<p>By far, the biggest issue has not been mediocre job prospects, but no job prospects because of outsourcing and downsizing. Only now companies are beginning to figure out outsourcing does not always work but the horse has fled the barn. </p>
<p>Simba’s description is right on the money for us, except the last sentence. There was way too much contract employment (expensive $100/hr consultants) which became half priced H1B’s and that’s all she wrote.</p>
<p>Yeah, I should have said that the engineering job market in the SF Bay Area started recovering around 2005.</p>