Success for Computer Science Students in a Flat World

If you want to better understand the world that we are living in today, I would strongly recommend The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman. Friedman does a great job describing the modern world, identifying the important issues that we are facing, and presenting all the information about each issue – both the good and bad. One of many points that Friedman makes in this book is that in today's world to be marketable we need to have specialized skills, often that span previously separate disciplines. This point is especially relevant to students graduating with computer science degrees; we are moving into a world where just writing code will no longer be a top-of-the-line source of income.

One advantage of the flat world is that companies no longer have to rely primarily on local employees in order to build a viable business. Remote and off-site work allow companies to hire from places like China or India to get quality work for a much lower cost. We have already started to see this trend happening in the software engineering industry. There is an increasing number of companies moving their coding work to foreign engineers who will work for less money and fewer health benefits. This movement poses a problem for computer science graduates who want to write code for their living.

Fortunately, there is still a way for computer science majors to be highly marketable in a flat world. As simple coding jobs fall out of the market in the United States, employers will be looking for software engineers with a level of expertise in other subjects. Engineers who can not only write code, but also contribute in other ways, will be in high demand.

For example, bioinformatics is great field to go into right now. Just over the last few years there has been a great boom in biological related technologies. Biologists everywhere have recognized the need to use computers in their work. Computers are cheaper and often more efficient than many of the traditional techniques in biological science. However, there is a problem in that biologists and computer scientists do not speak the same language, nor do they have related areas of expertise. This is where bioinformaticians find their success in the market. Not only do they have a strong background in programming, they understand biology. Bioinformaticians are a hot commodity in the market because of their ability to collaborate between two very different groups of scientists.

Bioinformatics is just one example of a high skill job that is available for those who want to write code. As the lower-skill jobs disappear for computer science graduates, they will need further specialization in other areas in order to be competitive in a flat world.