I would guess the issue is prestige. Software development, like engineering in general, is not a top-tier profession in the US. The actually top-tier professions are doctor, lawyer, and banker/financier. Software developers, like accountants, are well paid but second-tier in status, geeks who worry about the details rather than distinguished professionals who call the shots.
Interestingly, the three professions I mentioned above all have graduate degrees, whereas software developers have B.Sc. credentials, if that.
After 30 years working in the field, I wholeheartedly agree: the low status of CS is indeed a huge problem among practitioners, though I doubt many 20-year-olds appreciate this.
Probably 95% of software jobs play a supporting role; the business' primary focus lies elsewhere (e.g. finance, military, advertising/marketing, health care, engineering, etc). That relegates CS and its practitioners to be a cost center rather than a profit center -- like janitors and accountants and HR -- never a star, at best a 'utility' player, a commodity. In almost all workplaces, software/IT is seen as 'the cost of doing business' -- a liability to be cost-minimized and outsourced as much as possible and then dissed by the board whenever 'players' enter the boardroom: professionals like MBAs, MDs, PhD engineers, bankers, lawyers, etc.
It's likely that the wiser more perceptive undergraduates have some inkling of CS' underclass status. It's even more likely that females and those with social and financial ambitions are aware of the limits inherent in any role where one must stick one's head inside a computer every day for, literally decades. Then at age 40-to-50, some 20 years before retirement, these software auteurs are widely regarded to be 'over the hill', and thereafter in decline until death lays them off at last. (And their job is taken by a 22-year-old.)
It's little wonder that CS doesn't attract freshmen the way honey does flies. Aside from its attractive starting wage, in too many ways a CS degree portends 2-3 decades of social isolation and indentured servitude, followed at midlife by obsolescence and oblivion.
At the end of life, is it possible that any programmer will ever look back on their days and shout, 'My greatest dream has been achieved. I have truly changed the world!'
IMHO, the answer is no. I believe THAT is why students are not flocking to CS programs. CS is not a road to significance.
I disagree. The things you say may have been true decades ago, but are not entirely accurate today.
The US's banking industry's reputation took a big hit in 2008, and it has become increasingly common for top university students to head into tech over finance since then. Not to mention, firms like Goldman Sachs are replacing many of their traditional traders with software engineers.
Outside of top law schools, the prospects of law grads have diminished greatly over the past decade or two. And some varieties of lawyers, such as patent trolls, are especially frowned upon -- the opposite of "top-tier" and "distinguished" in the eyes of many.
And I don't think the pool of potential doctors and the pool of potential software engineers overlap much at all. I would guess that the number of university students deciding to be doctors instead of software engineers is quite small.
Finance may have taken a hit recently, but if you're in the northeast (NYC, Boston, etc.), it still has much higher prestige. It also has a much, much higher compensation ceiling.
The same goes for lawyers working in cities. Many law students are underemployed, but overall there's a much higher compensation ceiling.
Management consultants weren't mentioned, but a large percentage of top grads end up there, being groomed for executive positions in Fortune 500 companies.
Many of the Ivey League students gravitating to tech are likely envisioning themselves as founders or C-suite executives, not engineers. Outside of the SV bubble, software engineer is not a top-tier job. Nor is it a particularly well paying job. In SV though, it has prestige.
Also: how many of those professions simply assume that anyone good will be doing something else by the time they're in their 40s? A 50 year old lawyer or doctor might choose to be more supervisory but nobody is going to think they're a failure if they aren't, and their experience will be valued rather something they have to prove isn't holding them back.
> Many of the Ivey League students gravitating to tech are likely envisioning themselves as founders or C-suite executives, not engineers. Outside of the SV bubble, software engineer is not a top-tier job. Nor is it a particularly well paying job. In SV though, it has prestige.
My general rule is to follow the money, and at most companies the compensation levels don't look like engineering is a prestige position. Not bad, to be sure, but definitely outside the inner circle even at many companies where it's a core competitive attribute.
This isn't new: during the dot-com bubble, there were plenty of people who got decent numbers but the people getting rich tended to be management, sales, etc. with all of the talk of “passion” and highlighting the lucky few winners looking suspiciously like a way to get people to donate enough unpaid overtime to make someone else very rich.
Exactly. In good careers, the experience that comes with time is counted as an asset. If you're in a career where you're considered washed up by 30 [1], you'd better be standing in the middle of an arena and surrounded by 80,000 screaming fans.
I agree that the software engineering profession isn't one with much prestige vested into it as a profession.
However, the technology industry, especially up and coming start-ups, and the established players like google,facebook, or apple are some of the most prestigious companies to work for, in some ways surpassing that of McKinsey or Goldman Sachs in the eyes of an everyday person.
The things you say may have been true decades ago, but are not entirely accurate today.
OK, I'll buy there's something to that. But keep in mind that students' choices aren't made purely with a clear-eyed understanding of how things are now. They are made in part based on an understanding built up over time, some of which reflects how things were when they were when growing up. In particular, parents and other advisers who have a lot of pull can easily be acting on the basis of a decades-old view of the world. So even if things are shifting, current actions could well be lagging behind.
Interestingly, the three professions I mentioned above all have graduate degrees, whereas software developers have B.Sc. credentials, if that.