Technology

As a Computer science graduate, I have to say:

No shit! The industry is terrible and has no standards (I don't mean level of quality but there is no agreed accreditation or methodology). If you do end up in a job you will most likely not use even 5% of what whatever school you went to taught you. You will likely work for peanuts as there will always be someone to do it cheaper (not always right, or good, or even usable). You will work with people doing your job that just lied about having any post secondary education. There is almost no ability to move up in any position in the industry, and like everyone I know that stuck with it you will have the same job until you stop working (you will have to take a side move into another department most likely). This is also the industry most likely to get touched by the "good idea fairy" so you will also be exposed to the highest levels of stupid, like 3 layers of outsourcing the NOC to an active warzone sort of stupid.

I should have known it was a bad idea in college when most of my classmates where ACTIVELY WORKING IN THE INDUSTRY TO PAY FOR SCHOOL so they could get a piece of paper that said they could do the thing they where already doing. But I did my 15 plus years and got out, I have my own business now selling drugs and it is way less sketchy.

Requirements for a job in Computer Science are, in order of importance, first, a demonstrated talent. Second, a demonstrated skill level. Third, demonstrated knowledge.

Just like being a top-tier pianist, all the knowledge, raining, schooling, and education in the world matters nothing if you do not first have the talent.

But you do not need talent to get into a Computer Science course, nor to graduate from one. You just need the knowledge and the marks.

That is why there are so many uneducated, untalented Computer Science graduates out there.

This is the thing the teachers and educators in Computer Science never tell you.

I'm glad I never took it. Been employed in the field for thirty years.

I was going to study computer science. Instead I got a general AA and got a helpdesk job. Then A+ and a better job and a Net+ and an even better job and I'm not well off by any means but my family has a roof over our heads and food on the table and what's more I am still employed and don't have student loans so it's looking more and more like that's the right call and the best way to get into tech.

Well yeah, when the tech industry went through multiple waves of massive layoffs, that's going to be the case in the short term as things shake out.

I've been saying that the market is oversaturated for YEARS now but this just enrages tech bros into insulting me personally. It's very strange.

I always tell me CS/CE/Info students that they should focus on non profits, government agencies, etc. where at least employment will be stable.

Damn. Didn’t know about that at all. I’m genuinely glad the direction where I live (Germany) is the opposite, that way more people are needed and searched for than there is demand.
(I would have enough private projects without a job though lol.)

0% of the fault lays on the students who got the degrees they were told were in demand by every single adult in ther life.

This was a coordinated push by our government and tech sector to drive down the cost of skilled labor by oversaturating the field.

I say this as a CS major that was forced to work fast food for 6 years until I could find a shitty tech support job and work my way up from there, there was never a single opportunity for me to be a programmer like I intended.

An unfortunate but completely predictable result of the debt manufacturing industry. Widespread and getting worse.

The one and only time I took compsci at a junior college just taught the basics of Office

In case anyone is not aware:

Are you currently employed?

Have you actively sought a job in the last 4 weeks?

If the answer to both of those questions is 'no', then congrats, according to the BLS, you are not unemployed!

You just aren't in the labor force, therefore you do not count as an unemployed worker.

So yeah, if you finally get fed up with applying to 100+ jobs a week or month, getting strung along and then ghosted by all of them...

( because they are fake job openings that are largely posted by companies so that they look like they look like they are expanding and doing well as a business )

... and you just give up?

You are not 'unemployed'.

https://www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm#unemployed

You are likely a 'discouraged worker', who is also 'not in the labor force'.

https://www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm#discouraged

.........

Also, if you are 5 or 6 or 7 figures in student loan debt, and... you can only find a job as a cashier? waiter/waitress? door dash driver?

Congrats, you too are not unemployed, you are merely 'underemployed'.

But also, if you have too many simultaneous low paying jobs... you may also be 'overemployed'.

.........

But anyway, none of that really matters if you do not make enough money to actually live.

In 2024, 44% of employed, full time US workers... did not make a living wage.

https://www.dayforce.com/Ceridian/media/documents/2024-Living-Wage-Index-FINAL-1.pdf

(These guys work with MIT to calculate/report this because the BLS doesn't.)

You've also got measures like LISEP...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chriswestfall/2025/05/27/stunning-unemployment-survey-says-millions-functionally-unemployed/

Which concludes that 24.3% of Americans are 'functionally unemployed', by this metric which attempts to account for all the shortcomings of the BLS measures of the employment situation.

Using data compiled by the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $25,000 annually before taxes.

So basically this is a way to try to measure 'doesnt have a job + has a poverty wage job'.

https://www.lisep.org/tru

.........

A more useful measure of the actual situation for college grads, in terms of 'did it make any economic/financial sense to get my degree?' would be 'are you currently employed in a job that substantially utilizes your specific college education, such that you likely could not perform that job without your specific college education?'

Something like that.

It sure would be neat if higher education in the US did not come with the shackles of student loan debt, then maybe people could get educated simply for the sake of getting educated, but, because it does, this has to be a cost benefit style question.

• sincerely, a not unemployed but technically 'out of the the labor force' econometrician.