Posted on 04/28/2012 12:48:55 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
This is an article from Bloomberg, but since Bloomberg articles cannot be posted here, another website summarizes the article.
Original article here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-22/software-engineers-will-work-one-day-for-english-majors.html
To summarize the article: Although entry level software engineering jobs are extremely attractive for young graduating college students, their employability often starts to decline at age 35. There are two main reasons for this: 1. older employees may no longer be up-to-date with the latest technologies 2. they're too expensive. Statistics show that most software developers are out of the field by age 40. Moving into management roles can allay this problem, but these jobs are limited.
Something to think about if you're considering a career in software development.
Click above link for the complete article.
Others got into programming, etc.
However, when it comes to drafting de novo instructions about how to do things, or how they must or should be done, or regulations with the force of law (meaning 10 to 16, or 16 to 21 years with $100,000 fines), that's a different situation and you rarely find systems engineers or English majors doing either.
That's a field where you have to have native talent and the good (or bad) luck to find yourself in line to do that sort of writing and study.
It's not something you can do until you're 60 ~ or even 40 ~ eyesight problems get in the way, or, as Tony Wiener so aptly demonstrated, you can just go nuts!
So there's a career giving you maybe 15 years, top, to do the hard work, and maybe another 10 as an "editor" or manager. Whatever you are going to do you will do in that narrow gap in life.
Probably more long term work available to English majors but no one hands over power like that to any of them.
I don’t know what to think of this. I was a software developer; now I’m a database/data analyst; and, I’m a mid-50’s person with an English degree. I’m so confused.
So India is now importing Koreans!
You are missing something huge if you think you need to put in effort to get a degree in English. Getting a degree in English proves nothing. They may become doctors, but that is only because the system is set up in such a way that you can waste your time to get any degree while you accumulate pre-med credits before you apply to med school. Getting a degree in English is the path of least resistance. The system was set up this way to encourage more women to get college degrees.
Compiled ones, too. You may have heard of Greenspun's Tenth Rule:
Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.
I believe it was C.A.R. (Tony) Hoare who once said,
“Algol was a significant improvement over most of its successors.”
I encourage everyone to believe this nonsense. I am well over 40 years old, but I get about 6 to 12 emails a week from recruiters BEGGING me to at least TALK to them.
I am utterly, madly employable.
I stay current, of course.
But, everyone: Please believe this article. The fewer people in the field, the more $ can command!
Like you say, more projects, more contacts from would-be employers, than EVER.
Coders are a dime a dozen. A Software Engineer, however, is worth his weight in gold.
“You are missing something huge if you think you need to put in effort to get a degree in English. Getting a degree in English proves nothing. “
Your statement may be true now (and applying to most other degrees, by the way), but it wasn’t always so. And, it depends on where you acquired it. There are still some schools that give away nothing.
And as far as deployment? Hell, squirt, move over and let daddy do it for ya.
I now realize that the first two or three jobs I had out of college, were charity.
“They may become doctors, but that is only because the system is set up in such a way that you can waste your time to get any degree while you accumulate pre-med credits before you apply to med school.”
Yeah, um, you were clearly not an English major. Because that sentence reads like something out of Michelle Obama’s Princeton honors thesis. To wit, unparseable. I have no idea what you’re talking about and neither does anyone else.
English majors must demonstrate proficiency in composition, which most people can’t do (see your first paragraph predicate); grammar, which most people can’t master (ibid); and a foreign language, either a classic like ancient Latin or Greek, or a modern.
And Latin is more difficult than calculus. Ask anyone who’s taken both.
This is all in addition to reading the best thoughts from the best minds Western civilization has produced.
P.S., the real “path of least resistance” is to mock something you can’t do.
Ping for later. Great discussion.
No need. This is a message board, not an article to be published. So there are bound to be errors, especially when you change the sentence and do not bother with editing.
In any case, you do not need a college degree to learn how to compose a message. That knowledge can be imparted in middle school.
I'm 63, and I'm also going strong in software. I design and program embedded microcontrollers in special purpose instrumentation. I do the electronics design, printed circuit layout, and the software for those devices. The prototype devices are generally made in my basement machine shop. I then write the documentation and take the photographs for inclusion in those manuscripts.
There are few people these days who know software right down to the register level and know how to interface with custom hardware. I find that I am in more demand as time passes.
I don't do Java or web stuff. I leave that to the kids who don't know an ADC from a toad stool.
Yep, us old farts are pretty well positioned to stay as long as we want.
I’m 61, doing Software QA for 23 years and don’t expect a slowdown until code is written perfectly the first time.
Oh, now isn't that the truth! Mother Nature sure does cling to those hidden flaws!
“In any case, you do not need a college degree to learn how to compose a message. That knowledge can be imparted in middle school.”
Middle school doesn’t go beyond simple compound sentence structure. But when you’ve completed an English degree, however, you can juggle multiple subordinate clauses.
A simple sentence is one thought; a compound-complex sentence is one thought giving rise to others. Learning to write is learning to think. That’s why it’s so important to study English. When you’ve learned to think, you can pursue anything you want. Like medicine. Or law. Or string theory.
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