There’s too much of a focus on Google here. There are a lot more tech jobs outside Google than within Google.
Absolutely everyone I know who worked at Google has left. The pay was good, but they got tired of what they were doing. People outside of the San Francisco/Silicon Valley area may think places like Google, Facebook and Apple are the be-all and end-all, but here in the SF Bay Area, they’re becoming passé. The buzz these days seems to be around machine-learning, data science, and mobile apps startups.
Finding qualified tech workers is hard, and no company is going to throw away a resume from a programmer just because they went to a liberal arts school.
Also, I know some recent CS grads who are choosing to use their skills and talents for companies and non-profits with a mission/social cause they believe in. Yeah, Apple/Google/Facebook aren’t the goal for all.
“Absolutely everyone I know who worked at Google has left. The pay was good, but they got tired of what they were doing. People outside of the San Francisco/Silicon Valley area may think places like Google, Facebook and Apple are the be-all and end-all, but here in the SF Bay Area, they’re becoming passé. The buzz these days seems to be around machine-learning, data science, and mobile apps startups.”
Google is also a great place to work (#1 in Fortune’s best places to work survey, for years) but they do hire a lot of people who after a year or two may get bored and then leave. This quote form a Bloomberg article sums it up well:
“Technology companies that hire the smartest young people around all but guarantee themselves a high churn rate. A lack of employer loyalty is a defining feature of Generation Y. No matter how satisfied these highly marketable young minds may be, no matter how much they enjoy the free meals and hybrid car subsidies, they will jump ship as soon as they get bored or get a better offer elsewhere.”
And it’s pretty easy to switch jobs in silicon valley, and btw a lot of these startups are founded by ex Google, FB, Apple employees. And the reason many get funding is because the founders have Google on their resume.
Data science seems to fall under the Statistics umbrella at many schools (LAC or U), which itself includes courses in math and CS. Some have departments called “Data Science” or “Data Analytics” (like Denison who just added the major - https://denison.edu/academics/data-analytics ).
Mobile app development requires coding but more importantly requires good ideas about what people want/need, of course, and the ability to raise money for it and market it.
I don’t think this work is unique to any one type of school but approaches will be different.
One of the reasons Silicon Valley is so successful is because people constantly get up and leave and move around from company to company. That is the churn that keeps the innovation going. In other industries, loyalty may be paramount, but in tech, it is quite the opposite.
Regards the B.Ss vs B.A. topic. I do believe there are qualitative and quantitative differences in many offerings from different schools and many schools actually recognize that fact. While I cannot point to any comprehensive comparison, I can point to research my son made while researching his college list. Looking at his list there are basically three buckets.
The biggest bucket was universities that only award BS degrees. These included Stanford, CMU, MIT, UIUC, Purdue, and Georgia Tech.
The smallest bucket was universities that award only B.A. degrees: Harvard.
Then there are the universities that award bot B.S. and B.A. degrees. UT Austin, and UCLA. If you look at the differences between the B.S. and B.A. requirements for these two universities you will that that B.S. plans require more math, science, and in some cases credit hours. UT Austin actually has a nifty table that compares the requirements for its 3 CS degrees: B.S., B.A., and a hybrid B.S.A. This seems in line with how most people feel about B.S. vs B.A. degrees. However, there are exceptions (Cal for instance).
Bottom line, it comes down to what the OP wants. I think one of the mistakes that HS students interested in CS make is that do not take the time to investigate the details of their degree plan, and this matters.
Unlike most other states, California law makes employee non competition agreements unenforceable for nearly all employees. So job switching is not limited by non competition agreements like it can be in other states.
Probably most HS students do not dive too deeply into the curricular requirements and options of any college or major. Even on these forums, we see students and parents focusing on things like impressions from a visit, location, and other things over academics and cost. Or assuming such things based in whether a school is a LAC or whatever, or whether it awards BA or BS degrees.
@ucbalumnus I’m trying to understand exactly what you mean by post #67. For me personally I’d like a college that offers my major(CS) at the highest academic level I can get accepted. That said it wouldn’t make sense to dive deeply into the curricular requirements if it’s a college in an area where I wouldn’t like or didn’t like the visit. Same goes for matching a school I can’t afford. Why delve into the curricular requirements even for top schools if I can’t afford it? I agree with your over all sentiment that most people probably don’t check into curricular requirements enough but I think that it would have to come AFTER finding a college you would be interested in attending(location and feel included) as well as affording to attend.
There is a lot of misinformation on this thread. Where your degree comes from matters. The top tech firms and prestigious start-ups recruit disproportionately from two places:
top CS schools
Ivy-League-level schools (like UChicago, which doesn’t have a super highly ranked CS program).
Harvey Mudd would be included as a top CS school, so a CS degree from it would serve you well.
The order you analyze your options are influenced heavily with all the dimensions you noted: cost, environment, and curriculum. The weight you apply to each dimension is very personal.
In my sons case, money was not an option due to our saving money since birth and a favorable overall stock market. What he chose to do next was to dive into curriculum without a bias for or against University/LAC or BS/BA. After that he dove into the environments at all on his list. We visited many, and he arrived at a final list he was happy with.
Note that his methodology was heavily weighted on a CS/math/theory curriculum because he was very opinionated on what he wanted to study.In that list were many schools with B.S. curriculum and a few with B.A.
Match your methodology to what you feel important and you will be able to make an informed decision.
It is actually a luxury to be able to choose a college based on location and feel. Most students are tightly constrained by money limits (which can limit location – e.g. in-state public, or commuting to a local school to reduce room/board costs), so they must find the desired academics within that forced constraint (which can also mean settling for acceptable rather than optimal academic programs). Feel and such other factors which are not essential to the purpose of college (academic study) and the ability to afford it are therefore a much lower priority in choosing a college.
However, it should be noted that, even if the required curriculum for the major and general education are on the light side (e.g. at Amherst), a student could take additional electives to “bulk up” his/her studies (e.g. the Amherst student could take more CS and other courses than required, including some at UMass that are not available at Amherst). In this case, the available offerings need to be considered.
The misinformation comes from people who have never worked in the industry.
Again, please stop focusing on firms like Google, Apple, and Facebook. They represent a small minority of jobs in the industry, and don’t necessarily represent how the industry works in general. Most tech firms don’t send recruiters to colleges at all. They depend on new grads sending in resumes, or recommendations from current employees on whom to interview. When they do send out recruiters, they tend to recruit from local schools or schools with lots of CS students.
I’m not sure what a prestigious start-up is. Start-ups are going to be too small and too new to have developed a prestigious reputation.
Both Silicon Valley and WS are competing very aggressively for math majors/quants that can communicate effectively - top LAC’s are the prefect environment for this.
Also, if the “top tech firms” are the GAFAM ones, most of them recruit more widely than just the “top CS schools” and “Ivy-League-level schools”. For example, Apple has lots of San Jose State alumni.
“Both Silicon Valley and WS are competing very aggressively for math majors/quants that can communicate effectively - top LAC’s are the prefect environment for this.”
The top technical coders at SV don’t need to communicate unless they get into management which they typically don’t as that’s considered selling out. You have to be able to code and solve problems with innovative ideas. Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, CMU, Michigan drive Silicon Valley. Graduate from LACs are along for the ride but typically don’t create companies. Note: Jobs dropped out of Reed so that’s the one LAC that’s influenced SV. Again, do LAC graduates create companies or join companies created by graduates of other colleges?
There’s a reason the heavyweights of CS are Stanford, MIT, CMU, Berkeley, Michigan - their graduates create companies and wealth.
Almost all programmers work collaboratively in groups, so they have to be able to communicate. That especially applies to technical leads. Spending an hour or two each day in meetings is not unusual. And getting into management is not considered selling out.
Christopher Weaver has an interesting history with Wesleyan. He received a master of arts in liberal studies (MALS) (which is basically designed for working adults, primarily teachers) in 1975 and has returned to the Connecticut campus many times over the years. Weaver is credited with being one of the moving forces behind Madden Football:
@theloniusmonk, you are missing the point - aspiring to being one of the mass of coders, which in the future will be accomplished by robots, is very different than being a leader of same