Have you CS graduates found jobs?

[Guest]

So, have any of you CS students that graduated this spring with me found any jobs?  Some of us who decided to stay here as graduate students are curious.  Any successes?  Anybody even trying?  Or have you resigned yourself to working at Home Depot yet?

I, personally, decided to go for my masters and throw good time and money after bad in the hopes that it will bide me enough time to let the job market recover.  With a masters, I could teach.  But I doubt that I could get a job at SIU.  Out of all of the faculty candidates that have presented in the over two years I have been here, there was only one white male.  He didn't even have a white-sounding name.  Maybe there is just a shortage of qualified white males in CS.  Does it seem reverse-discriminatory or is the CS department just oversaturated with white males?

Anyway, what's the job market like?  Am I going to be working at Home Depot by next year?

[Guest]

No job yet here, the market is really quite depressing...

[Stiffler]

I'm not a grad yet, but I do have a job lined up for when I do. Well, I do need to move out to California, but what's the down side.  :-D

Jon

[Ryan Lintker]

Applied for really good job close to home, interviewed over a month ago, they are still interviewing.  It could take them a while to weed out applicants for the second round.  That has been my excuse for not looking too hard for the time being.  Once they hire someone else, all my good buddies with jobs can squeeze me in somewhere.  Currently I am a full time residential electrician and honestly haven't missed sitting at a computer all that much.  A well deserved break after a "wonderful" senior year.

I do believe that I have heard from at least two graduates that do have real CS full time jobs.

[Aaron Drake]

You mean we're supposed to get jobs after we graduate??   :-o

Well that doesn't sound like much fun.  Jeez, I was hoping to retire once I was done with school. ;-)

Oh well.  The way I look at it, work has got to be better than school.  I mean, work and school are basically the same thing: You go somewhere each day and do work.  However, with work you don't have as much overtime (i.e. doing homework, studying, etc.), you don't have to take any tests, you can probably park within visible distance of a building (definitely a plus), and you get paid!  Not to mention the fact that computer programmer is consistently rated as one of the best jobs in America in terms of stress, salary, working environment, etc.

Maybe I'm being naive, but work doesn't sound so bad.  I mean, sure, it's no paradise, but it sounds a heckuva lot better than school.  :-D

[Guest]

Home Depot is hiring!?!? :-o

Geez, what are you doing, trying to hoard all the GOOD jobs!?!?!? :-o   :-(

[Jerry]

Ok, let me see if I can set this record straight.

It is true that the University Administration requested we make a concernted effort to gender diversity in the CS department. We did do more phone interviews with all the women candidates we had, and we brought in any who we felt had a chance at being qualified. We made one offer, but could not close the deal.

Over the last two years the percentage of white males + white females applying for CS faculty posistions was less than 1%. For that matter, the percentage of US born applicants was less than 1%. If you take away those who we deemed qualified, it drops it down even further.

The majority of our applicants are people from India and China who have come over to the US for their education, and would rather stay in the US than go home.

If you look at the population of most graduate programs, including ours, the number of US born students is very small. As graduate director I accepted 85 applications for graduate students to begin Fall 2004. Of those, nearly 80 were international students from India.

In the US, only about 5% of the student population attends a Ph.D. program, of those fewer finish, of those fewer decide to stay in academics, and of those fewer are in CS. So, its not a case of reverse discrimination, but lack of supply.

So, you want to get a job, get a Ph.D.!

[Peter Motyka]

I got lucky in the metro-east job scene.  I found a great internship last summer and it turned into part-time work during my last semester.  Upon graduation, they hired me full time.  I have been working with this company for about a year now and the work is starting to get more interesting.  We are now developing our database application in Java. I am developing the web portion with Tomcat and Struts and Victor Cardona (summer intern) is developing the GUI with Swing.  As happy as I am to have a job... I would have really liked to have relocated out of the Southern Illinois area by now.  From what the job market looks like out west, I will most likely be here for a while :(

[Aaron Drake]

Hmmm, I wonder which SIUE grad posted that anonymous reply at 12:56 AM...

That cynical and sarcastic response sounds like it could have only come from a certain SIUE Stoodent I once knew.  ;-)

[DaleDoe]

Only 1% US born applicants?  I wonder why.

In my graduate classes about 2/3 of the students are international students.  I think that is fairly representitive of the CS master's program at SIUE.  It might be slightly higher.  If that is the ratio of students graduating from the master's program, though I supsect it is not, that would be a huge desparity between the number graduating and those applying here to teach.  Maybe it is something cultural that international students see prestige in being a professor, while American students have put up with crappy teachers most of their life and see no prestige in it.  (though most college professors I have had are not bad)  Also, SIUE may be only looking for applicants with PhDs, not master's.

I don't know about anyone else around here, as soon as I get my master's, I'm outa here.  No more academics for me. :-D :-P

[Jerry]

In the last round of hiring the CS Department was looking to fill a tenure track position. Currently at SIUE that mean a Ph.D.

[Guest]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/22/technology/22JOBS.html?ei=5062&en=0c92e3397e0523e7&ex=1059451200&partner=GOOGLE&pagewanted=all&position=

[Aaron Drake]

Here's another article related to the previous post's link:

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59677,00.html

[DaleDoe]

Americans should stand up against these companies that outsource such work.  I mean don't buy their products!  I know that's not what you want to hear, but that's how it is.  Such outsourcing isn't helping the American economy.  All those dollars going outside the US, not being taxed or recycled into our economy.

Those of you who know me know I'm a car guy and that's where I see the most of this occuring.  Just look at how full the parking lot is of Toyotas, Mitsubishis, Nissans, Hondas, etc.  I know many of you are saying  "But my Toyota Camry is made in the US."  But you're likely wrong.  First of all, only 51% of cars have to be ASSEMBLED in the US to be "made in the USA."  So only a little over half are assembled here, and the parts are made overseas with steel from oversees and labor from overseas and profits go to mostly investors overseas.  

I know that this makes little difference to most people trying to save $100 on a new car.  But I've worked on those cars.  Parts and labor are much more expensive.  Parts must come from overseas.  Labor is higher because labor overseas is cheaper, so the cars are not built to minimize labor costs.

Sorry to get off on a tangent like this, but I'll put it this way.  If most people buy cars from overseas, the American car companies will go out of business (as they're struggling now) and we will have no choice but all drive Toyotas.  That's not an option that appeals to me.

It is the same in any other industry that outsources like that.  But I've gotta go.

[William Grim]

I agree.  I think we should do everything we can to fight this.  I'm just going to tell the truth based on my past experiences.

First of all, I've bought computer products in the past that I later found out were produced overseas (hard drives and graphics cards and probably other stuff).  I found out they were produced overseas when I called tech. support because of a broken piece of equipment.

When I called them, not only were they difficult to understand, but they were clueless as to what they were doing.  *NOTE*: Reading from a card does not mean you are technically competent.

Now, I know that we have tech. support people in the USA that are just as bad, but I run into it much less.  I've called Dell support up before to ask questions about new computers my friends were buying, and they were quite knowledgable.  It was quite evident they knew what they were doing.

Now, call up tech. support across the ocean and try to do the same.  Not only will the overseas people be getting your money, but they'll be producing inferior work.

And I completely agree with the lack of recycling money back into our economy, but I don't want to repeat Dale's comments.

Whenever you can, buy American.