> decade ago my region of the country would produce maybe 50 fresh CS candidates a year, now it’s closer to 500 spread across multiple different educations.
A degree is not the same as “talent”. The degree doesn’t even mean you really “learned” the fundamentals, so much as you were able to regurgitate information and pass exams.
I’m a Principal at Amazon. One issue I see among CS graduates is a lack of understanding in very basic CS fundamentals. On paper, these candidates have CS bachelors degrees. On the other hand, they struggle to pick the right algorithmic approach when something is clearly a graph or tree traversal problem.
I don’t disagree with you but in Danish culture you get a degree or you work as unskilled labour in 99% of the cases.
Even if you don’t “need” a degree you still get one because it would be a serious handicap if you didn’t and our educational system doesn’t cost the individual money. In fact we pay you $1300 a month for 6-7 years while you work on your higher education. I’m sure we could debate the system, but the result is that almost everyone in CS/SE get a degree of at least academy level once they finish the mandatory 10 years of school + 3 years of gymnasium granting them access to the higher educations, and as such the number of educated is a very strong indicator of how many new programmers are entering the field.
> the result is that almost everyone in CS/SE get a degree of at least academy level
But this doesn’t mean these graduates are skilled? From your explanation, it sounds like there’s an incentive to get a degree - both cash payments from the government and an opportunity to avoid labor work.
> as such the number of educated is a very strong indicator of how many new programmers are entering the field.
But “educated” in this context means they passed. It doesn’t mean all or even half of these graduates understand the discipline sufficiently to be productive employees or even work at a FANG tier company.
I guess my point is - the market might be saturated with these graduates, at least on paper. But that’s not the same as the market being saturated with talented programmers, engineers, admins, or whatever the job title is.
A degree is not the same as “talent”. The degree doesn’t even mean you really “learned” the fundamentals, so much as you were able to regurgitate information and pass exams.
I’m a Principal at Amazon. One issue I see among CS graduates is a lack of understanding in very basic CS fundamentals. On paper, these candidates have CS bachelors degrees. On the other hand, they struggle to pick the right algorithmic approach when something is clearly a graph or tree traversal problem.