my S who graduated last year ended up with two offers from small government contractors. He avoided even applying to the "FAANG "companies in his industry (he actually is a GDD major) . His starting Salary is not what he wanted, but its been almost a year and he is a big fish in a small pond. Its not work he wants to do for his entire career, but he has learned valuable skills that will take him into his job. He wants to do his own startup one day, so his next move will likely be working for one. I work with people in the FAANG’s every day, and its not all glamour there.
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I read recently that there’s been a severe shortage of Electrical Engineers in particular because so many choose to go into Software Development post-graduation rather than becoming practicing Electrical Engineers. At least they’ll have options for alternative career paths.
Reading the article one might get the impression that most CS majors at Berkeley cannot find quality jobs, which I very much doubt is true… One factor that contributes to this impression is cherry picking negative anecdotes over positive ones. They mention CS majors who struggle to find jobs, but fail to mention the many who easily find jobs with starting salaries in 6 figures. They also don’t list any information about what percentage of students fall in to seeking employment/internship/… vs what percent have no problem. They make it clear that “some” students struggle, but leave it up the reader to guess how large “some” is.
What is more objectively clear is large US tech companies ass a whole are in a far better position now than they were 6 months ago. The trend is things are getting better, and the article ignores this. I mentioned the largest tech companies stock price have all have a year to date gain of >30%. It’s a very different time than it was 6 months ago when things looked dire for US tech, with common predictions of a post 2000 like tech recession, and tech companies struggling to find ways to cut back on expenses, including firing and stopping hiring. External sites publishing layoff data suggests tech layoffs peaked in Jan 2023 and have dropped in each month since then. This month may not have any published layoffs at especially well known, large tech companies. besides a minuscule 158 at Microsoft (compared to 10,000 layoffs in January when things were more dire).
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The pandemic was so artificial. All that technology demand was there only because it was forced on people and businesses. Riding that momentum, the tech companies pushed a lot of bad products people didn’t want…smart homes, for instance. For that to actually work for real, you have to re-wire your house, buy all new appliances, configure a series of complex groups, and interface it with specific voice commands…that only work 50% of the time. I can’t even get my Google speaker to turn off my TV consistently.
Amazon is the perfect example. They were the retail king during the pandemic, raking in record profits, so they built new warehouses, and overinvested in high-tech grocery and retail pharmacy delivery service. That was until inflation hit, and people realized that Wal-Mart and Target have better prices. Amazon did everything except listen to what their customers wanted.
So, there are plenty of tech jobs out there, but the “prestige” a big tech company out of college is over. The same thing happened during the dot com bust in the late 90s. Graduates will have to put a suit on, and compete for a job. They’re not going to start at an inflated salary either. They’re going to start at an entry level salary and work their way up.
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There’re many reasons why a company’s stock price may go up. One of them is that the company has cut cost, which primarily means reduction in headcount for software companies. Obviously, not all areas of tech have suffered, with AI becoming even hotter. However, most CS graduates go into more traditional software engineering. With greater supply of these graduates and less demand from tech companies (again, not all of them), the imbalance is tilting in the other direction from it was not too long ago.
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Published numbers on timeline of offers suggest the vast majority receive offers during year of graduation – most before graduation, but many not until after graduation. This relates to why they begin conducting the rolling survey “a few months” after graduation. Note that in the surveys above, 16% of Berkeley CS grads were still seeking work well after graduation (in all of 2020 to 2022). That said, I agree with you that 2022 is likely too early to see the full effects, which Is why I ended by saying, “Maybe things will be completely different for 2023 grads. Maybe not.”
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Agree, but I’m embarrassed to admit I laughed as I read this.
I immediately thought of Ross Geller (Friends) yelling “pivot!” with the couch.
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Most colleges in CA were not that difficult to get into for CS. This means UCR, UCM, CSUs other than CPSLO, SJSU, and CPP, and privates that are not generally hard to get into (i.e. those other than Caltech, Stanford, USC, Pomona, Harvey Mudd).
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I’m glad it worked out well for you this year. Since you are a Berkeley(based on your handle) alum I find your comment very interesting. It was difficult this year. Please don’t invalidate our experience.
There is a shortage of CS professors that is well known and widespread across the US contributing to the problem of impacted and smaller CS programs.
If you find the reference, could you PM me with it? My son is interested in EE (but not software) and this might be nice for him to see.
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I have a friend who works for a large multidisciplinary engineering services firm who has mentioned the challenge of finding entry level EEs who want to work in the more traditional EE fields. His firm deals with power & transmission, controls, instrumentation, etc but there are many other types of EE jobs that are not software engineering. Your son would have a wide variety of fields to choose from. My friend is based in the SF Bay Area, and I can imagine the lure of the high-paying, “sexy” jobs might be even more acute there.
p.s. - your profile is hidden, so I was unable to PM you ( or at least I don’t know how).
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Thanks! This is all great to hear. We are located in the bay area as well, but only have experience with software companies.
Yes, I have experienced that problem myself, but I eventually figured it out! Go to your messages screen, click on the “New Messages” button, then “Add users or groups” will allow you to search for message recipients by name. Sorry that it’s a bit more hassle than just clicking on the name. Posting this here just in case anyone else isn’t sure how.
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I can’t seem to be able to PM you but here are some links (I hope they are allowed).
My son is also doing EE due to interests in circuits, signal processing, and computer hardware. He’s not interested in pursuing a career in software development.
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One of my kids is a Pomona '19 grad and I still follow the Facebook page for parents and families. At Pomona it is very challenging to get CS classes if you are not a CS major, and the parents in that group are very angry and frustrated about it. You have students majoring in lots of other fields where they need or will benefit from certain skills (e.g., math, econ, psychology, cognitive science etc) and are shut out of CS classes.
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Is this for Pomona or Cal Poly Pomona. I would expect less of this challenge at the former and more at the latter.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it’s Pomona. We’ve heard similar stories from students at other LACs, like Reed. It’s hard to hire enough CS faculty to keep up with students’ desire to take these courses.
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I mean Pomona College, not CPP. If you look at the departmental webpage FAQ’s it acknowledges that they cannot guarantee that everyone who wants to major in CS will be able to. Computer Science Frequently Asked Questions | Pomona College in Claremont, California - Pomona College. And before you suggest that a Pomona student could do the major at Harvey Mudd, note that Pomona doesn’t permit you to do an “off-campus” major if that major is one that is offerred at Pomona. So theoretically you can take a CS class at HMC, but good luck getting into one when you’re not a HMC student and also not a CS major. My '19 grad was an Econ major and managed with difficulty and persistence to complete a CS minor. But the situation seems to have gotten worse since then.
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Yes this is exactly what I meant! Thank you for your sharing your experience too! Many of the UC schools are not allowing anyone to change your major to CS, so even if you get admitted under your alt major(data science, math) you can’t switch to CS. He was fortunate to get in at another top program, but it was crazy this year. It has gotten more difficult the last 2 years.
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I’m on that FB group too and have seen the complaints. Wanted to add that it can be a bit of a Catch-22. So it’s hard to get into CS classes at Pomona unless you are a CS major. But since students don’t declare their major until the end of their sophomore year, it makes it hard to declare CS as your major if you were never able to get into any CS classes as a Fr/So.
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