Now Hiring, If You’re Young
Fri 01 May 2009 – 14.35
Oh how I wish that were true as a general statement, but this time it’s really only to do with the computer science and engineering field. An article in the New York Times reveals the shamefully, and underrated, short half-life of a software or hardware engineer.
According to a survey … six years after finishing college, 57% of computer science graduates are working as programmers; at 15 years the figure drops to 34%, and at 20 years — when most are still only in their early 40′s — it is down to 19%. In contrast, the figures for civil engineering are 61%, 52% and 52%. As one industry executive stated a few years ago at a stockholders’ meeting when asked about corporate downsizing, ”The half-life of an engineer, software or hardware, is only a few years.”
While this may seem like a troubling trend within the computer science field, it is good news for recent graduates who are hungry to find work in this bizarre-o economy.
I have observed a similar trend in the field of graphic design, which is my own field. While there may be a number of designers in their mid-to-late twenties, the numbers dwindle as we age. Are people leaving the profession for other professions? Or is everyone simply working from home and thus hiding themselves from my surveying eyes.
Perhaps it’s like this in every field. You could argue that half the reason so many middle managers came into being in the mid 20th century is to accommodate the aging workforce who would ordinarily have worked on a farm or simply died at a younger age due to some infectious disease. That’s one theory.
posted by Scott in careers,life.
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