[ale] guess I am screwed, eh?

[Bao C. Ha]

On Sat, Aug 24, 2002 at 08:44:30PM -0400, Cade Thacker wrote:

Hi Cade,

Yes, you are screwed.  Your starting salary as BS in CS can only
command a salary maybe twice of a business analyst or project
manager, instead of three times or more.

You will be asked to do the impossible like solving NP-complete
problems, while your business analyst or project manager 
counterpart has no clue and just plunge all of the company's
resources into a blackhole.

You will also be expecting to produce robust applications while
your counterparts with a tech certification are having fun with
deadlocks in threading.  Your boss may also expect you to use
some types of development methodologies like extreme programming or
design patterns for rapid prototyping, while your tech certified 
friends are allowed to brute-force anything and are happy to 
declare victory even if their applications break everything else.
"Memory leaks?  It is easy, just reboot the server everyday."

And you will become bewildered and ask your business analyst and
project manager friends why don't they do data modeling before
making a multi-million dollar commitment.  "Well!  Dr. Ha did not
really going into details at school, except he kept mumbling about 
ERD, normalization, DK/NF, ..."

And you will also feel miserable and keep wondering why can't I be
like Fastow, a good example what a business degree can do to one's
fortune.

But, then I don't know what I am talking either, since my degrees
are in Chemical Engineering.

Bao

> Considering that I am one week into my BS of CS at Georgia Tech, I guess I
> am screwed because of this article. Why oh why did they not published this
> thing a week earlier. ;)
> 
> http://newsfactor.com/perl/story/19136.html
> 
> Is the CS degree(any reputable college) still relevant for the masses? We
> will always need people to create compilers and OS stuff, but how many do
> we need? You don't really need a CS degree to be a medioce(sp?) Java
> programmer(just look at some of my co-workers ;). In thinking about this,
> is it kinda like lawyers? We always say we have too many lawyers, but
> schools are still pumping them out en mass.
> 
> Would this topic be different if we live someplace else like New Enland or
> Silicon Valley?
> 
> Well damn the torpedos, I am going for it anyway ;)
> 
> <snip from article>
> "Pretty soon, we'll start to see CIOs having fewer techies on staff," he
> said. "The rest will be business analysts, project managers -- those kinds
> of people."
> 
> Programs To Pursue
> 
> As a result of these and other IT changes, high-tech workers may want to
> take a few business and management courses to supplement their
> technological acumen, according to analysts. One educational path that
> could be rocky is the tried-and-true B.S. in computer science. As Craig
> Symons, vice president of IT management at Giga Information Group, told
> NewsFactor:  "A bachelor's degree in computer science would be overkill
> for most people. Computer science is now really a major for those who want
> to go into computer hardware or software engineering."
> 
> Symons added that people who are interested in creating applications would
> be better off in either a certification program or a business program with
> a focus on information systems.
> 
> </snip>
> 
> 
> sigh...
> 
> --cade
> 
> On Linux vs Windows
> ==================
> Remember, amateurs built the Ark, Professionals built the Titanic!
> ==================
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Bao C. Ha                    voice: (310) 980-3805
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Primary Perpetrator of "Slackware Linux Unleashed"

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