Where did your student decide to go?
I’ll look for these old posts and see if I can get more info.
He decided to go to Cal. It was simply a function of proximity (45 mins away from home), cost ($72k cheaper over 4 years), and the goal of working in Bay Area after graduation. It was hard to beat Berkeley.
1 Like
Why didn’t you say that he was also accepted to Berkeley? In all honesty, had I known that your son was accepted to Berkeley for CS, I would have recommended it over either UIUC or GTech. Your son absolutely made the right decision - Berkeley is at least the equivalent of UIUC and GTech, better weather, and for $72,000 less, I see your son’s choice as a no-brainer.
I will also say that your son did REALLY well - being accepted to Berkeley, UIUC, and GTech is pretty amazing!
Congratulations, so he got into Cal, UIUC and GTech? Amazing! Cal is such a hard admit, seems to be much harder than the other two schools!
2 Likes
Just to clarify, he didn’t apply to GA Tech. His final choice was between Cal and UIUC and the other parents who were making the decision last year were all picking between UIUC and X where X ranged from Purdue to UCSB to UT Austin and some others. As I mentioned in first reply on this thread, I admittedly know more about UIUC than GT. We didn’t apply to GT because of the bias towards coming back to the Bay Area.
I believe some posters mistook you for the OP… at least I was confused. 
I hate to interject reality into this discussion… but NOBODY can predict the labor markets five years from now. Nobody. I work in corporate recruiting, go to industry seminars and symposia, speak with colleagues at a wide range of companies (including Big Tech, VC, I-Banking) and the only thing we ALL agree on is that none of us has a crystal ball.
Amazon, Facebook, Google- they couldn’t predict their headcount numbers six months out (they were still hiring like crazy at the end of last summer… before they started downsizing in January) and we think that here on CC we can figure out who has better ties to the West Coast- Illinois or Georgia, and who has higher paying coops, and what is the opportunity cost to a year of coop?
None of us know. And making a decision on which college to attend based on a faux analysis which is predicated on made up numbers is a bad way to pick a college. My opinion of course, not a fact. But what I DO know is that 2008/2009 and into 2010 was a bloodbath in some pretty stable industries (Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns were on life support, but most smaller institutions then ended up in cardiac arrest). There were fourth and fifth year associates being let go from some of the biggest law firms in the world-- which then backed up hiring for the laterals, which backed up hiring for new lawyers and summer associates.
And these were profitable, healthy law firms.
Tech- none of you remember 2001/2002? CS salaries plummeted, and despite what you may think it wasn’t because of outsourcing, too many H1B’s, or some conspiracy theory. Just supply and demand. Too many folks looking for too few jobs in tech.
I’d bore you with 1993/94 but you get my message even if you don’t believe me. Do not pick your kid’s college based on what you think is going to happen in the labor markets in five years. You will be wrong. And I know lots of petroleum engineers who graduated into the last oil and gas bust- absolutely disconsolate-- because they had been told when they were in HS that “Petroleum engineering is a rock solid, high paying career”. Yes it is- if you can get a job.
The one thing that I feel pretty confident in predicting is that if/when there is salary compression in Tech/CS and related- which is usually what happens after big layoffs-- a lot of kids who told everyone how passionate they were about CS are about to discover a different passion.
3 Likes
You aren’t interjecting reality into this discussion - you are simply saying people should ignore the reality of the data they are seeing (recent hiring stats, current job listings etc.) because there could be a potentially catastrophic job market 4 years later. I don’t know why you think ignoring current realities is somehow a more prudent approach. As far as passion for CS etc, its perfectly fine for 21-23 year olds to decide on a career based on the most objective data they see - median salaries and great benefits. Finding what you want in life is a never ending journey and at the beginning of adulthood getting paid a lot for a CS career is not a bad way to figure it out.
I don’t think @blossom is saying that people should ignore data. But data can deceive. A few years’ worth of data is far from sufficient to make a trend for a lifetime. The reality of the world is that everything, including every line of business, is cyclical, because when something is good we all want more of it, until there is too much of it. Excesses are simply part of the human nature. And none of us knows when a cycle will end, or we’d all be doing something else.
I agree that no one can predict what will happen but that’s all the more reason to decide based on the evidence we have right now, and to the extent we can interpret.
My point was- do NOT pick a college based on what you believe to be a salary differential between option A and option B. The differential may or may not be there once you graduate, given the dynamism of the labor markets. You wanna extrapolate from the extreme tech bulge of the last five years and predict your kids starting salary? Go ahead. I can introduce you to thousands of Google, Spotify, Amazon employees who will be happy to show you their termination letters.
2 Likes
Yes there is a laying off thing going on right now because of impending recession. Even at my husband’s company they have asked leaders to provide names of people to lay off, it’s been very stressful for the leaders. Decisions are not based on where you went to school…
4 Likes
Here’s a recent article in Wired about the broken pipeline from SV internships to lucrative CS jobs in big tech, even for graduates of some of most elite schools in CS:
This is before the impact of disruptive technologies such as ChatGPT has been felt. ChatGPT, BTW, can also write computer codes. It’s only 2 month old and has plenty of room to grow up. It may never write programs as well as the top programmers, but the vast majority of programmers are “average” and they better watch out.
2 Likes
There was a thread a while back where someone was arguing that CS graduates were basically “programmers”. In response I posted how my son had to correct a grand parent who introduced him to someone as a “programmer”. His reply was he was a “computer scientist “, a “data scientist “, or an “engineer “, but definitely not a “programmer”.
1 Like
I agree with you that CS graduates aren’t just “programmers” and they learn much more than basic programming skills. However, most of them do work in software development, whatever their actual job titles are. Perhaps that wouldn’t be the case in the future.
1 Like
Microsoft just announced a couple of days ago that they are pausing development on the 90 acre campus minutes from Georgia Tech. This was a huge project, additional 15,000+ Atlanta employees, etc. They are in the process of laying off at least 10,000 people.
Google laid off more than that, and many were career employees with no notice.
Who knows what the market is going to be four years from now?
1 Like
I did no such thing if you go back and read my comments specific to the OPs situation. Anyways, this is now turning into a value of CS discussion which is not what the OP wanted to discuss. With that, I’m going to bow out.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 180 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.