Doing computer science and my dad keeps telling me im not going to get a job

[Fox5]

Once you get past an experience level, education doesn't matter anymore. I'd say after working in the field for 10 years we don't even look at degree, because if you need a degree to boost your reputation for a senior / staff level position, you aren't good enough to stand on your own feet.

Sometimes it is just bad luck because the company they worked for aren't doing well, and some I know that are out of work had such a bad luck that the entire industry collapsed (i.e. semiconductor equipment vendors like Applied Material laid off 18k out of their 20k staff during the dot com bust). Sometimes their skills are way too specialized to migrate to another field as experts demanding expert salary, so they are willing to take a chance to start from entry level, hoping to get in the door and prove themselves and climb up quickly.

Government jobs advance almost entirely based on the degree.

 

[Markbnj]

The guys who applied for the job we posted in the paper?

We wanted local talent, so we put the ad in the paper first (and our website). Only after the initial response did we stick it all over the web.


I agree about staying current. Most of the guys who applied had relevant job experience for the position. It wasn't like they were only RPG programmers looking to bust into a C#.net position. It was more like guys who have decades doing RPG and a few years doing modern languages looking to suddenly go from a Sr. C# developer to a Jr. C# developer.

You mean you guys printed your job listings on paper using ink?

I guess there is still a role for the printed word, but I figured printed classifieds were either long dead or relegated to the exchange of coded messages between spies.

I can't explain your candidates. There are jobs out there, and if they have recent and demonstrable experience in a modern language and platform then I think they must just be poor interviewers, or perhaps the sort of long-term corporate employee who just doesn't know how to replace the safety net once it disappears.