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After graduating with a BBA Econ in 1999 I made a play at the CS world. Realizing I was not willing to learn any real programing I went to get my PhD in Econ. Now I sit all day... programming.
Funny world.
You'll find it here.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on September 13, 2007 at 02:59 PM in Education | Permalink
Comments
With the caveat that not all CS majors are great programmers, I wish that more of the econ/finance types that work with me and do programming all day long were better programmers.
(I also wish the IT guys who build our data infrastructure knew a little more about finance, but that's another story.)
Posted by: mobile at Sep 13, 2007 3:26:56 PM
This is increasingly the case in many fields. It would be smart of universities to offer programming courses, particularly in computer modeling. It's getting to the point that the ability to program is almost as important as the ability to do math or write clearly. (Or, in some fields, as the ability to write unclearly)
Posted by: Dolohov at Sep 13, 2007 3:30:03 PM
"Within the narrow range of occupation and achievement that we have at the University, there is no strong relation between what you study and your occupation. Here is some data on a 10 percent random sample of Chicago alumni from the last 20 years. Take the mathematics concentrators: 20 percent software development and support, 14 percent college professors, 10 percent in banking and finance, 7 percent secondary or elementary teachers, and 7 percent in nonacademic research; the rest are scattered."
From The Zen of Education
I guess I fail to see how choice of major is important. I'm not looking to discount social mobility possibilities, but early life choices and opportunity in schooling definitely seem to matter.
Posted by: jd at Sep 13, 2007 4:03:52 PM
The talk you cited actually emphasizes the importance of the major:
"The one college experience variable that does have some connection with later worldly success is major."
He elaborates on the importance of majors particularly the differences between science majors, social sciences (especially econ) and the humanities. Within categories, there's quite a bit of variance, but the occupation outcomes of people majoring in nat sci or econ vs the humanities are quite significant and striking. And this underestimates the major choice effect because as we know the undergrad population at UC is not a random sample of the college going population.
Posted by: Notyet at Sep 13, 2007 4:29:41 PM
What about no major - or in that case - no degree period?
The irony here is that we are talking about majors for IT careers in an industry that remains one of the few that you can get into and be successful without a degree. Does it hold you back? In my experience if you are good at what you do than it doesn't matter. The degree question has come up only once in my career. And i was still hired and because the only person on staff that did not have a masters or doctorate.
Posted by: yoshi at Sep 13, 2007 4:37:51 PM
Another CS/econ undergrad, econ PhD here. I chose to pursue graduate economics because I didn't want to sit at my desk all day programming. There's some teaching mixed in, but a lot of my time is spent programming.
Funny world indeed.
Posted by: EconCScombo at Sep 13, 2007 4:46:59 PM
Another PhD econ/reluctant programmer here. I've always wondered if there isn't some market failure here. Is it efficient for economists to do their own programming?
I'm a good economist and a novice programmer. Why aren't I specializing more?
Posted by: Henry V at Sep 13, 2007 4:58:37 PM
Wow quoted on MR. The height of my fame in economics no doubt. For me it was more about the motivation. When it was just about a job and making money, I was not willing to learn any real programing. However, now it is about solving/modeling/estimating/ problem X in my research. That gives me the motivation to learn how to program. No doubt I am really bad and inefficient at it and could stand to take a class or two in the CS department but who has the time.
I do look over at my friends who stayed in the tech game learned the languages and are now making pretty good money and think about what might have been. But I would be bored out of my mind, I do covet their programing skill but I don't covet their jobs.
For those lamenting the amount of programing that one must do to study econ (I imagine they are just talking about STATA or Mathematica), I think the trend will only continue. As simulations, agent based modeling and other computational methods become more and more common place those who want to stay up to date will be forced to get comfortable with programing. There is really no substitute for writing your own code and knowing what all the moving parts are. The cost are coming down all the time though. I imagine I could do 99% of what I do in the new STATA if I wanted to. As it stands I use the R statistical language for most things (because its what I know best) and Java when I absolutely have to.
Posted by: GoodneesOfFit at Sep 13, 2007 5:22:39 PM
H5,
Market failure? I don't know. But there's certainly a market opportunity for anyone who can figure out how to transfer domain knowledge to an expert implementer. If you have a programming assistant and he doesn't know much about your subject, you'll have to spec it out to him in such detail that it's practically like writing the program yourself. The expert software systems that convert R or LaTeX into fast running assembly code (but cleanse all your data first) are still a few years away.
I've found my niche as a well-rounded computer/finance guy (though maybe that's the only way that I'm well rounded), but I like both of those subjects. If it doesn't bore you to tears, let me recommend that you work on becoming an intermediate programmer. In the long run, you will get more economics done.
Posted by: mobile at Sep 13, 2007 5:34:09 PM
Adding my name to the chorus of people with CS undergrad, econ grad degrees... in my case, it was just time for a change after 15 years of programming. I spent a whole lot more time writing code in my job as an economist than I expected... and I echo the previous sentiment that the ability to write code is pretty important. Fortunately it's something I enjoy doing...
Posted by: Rich at Sep 13, 2007 5:56:54 PM
Luckily for me, my MA in economics has prepared me well for searching for missing semicolons.
Posted by: Nicoli at Sep 13, 2007 6:41:53 PM
Pretty close to my path - now I have tenure and take programming classes for fun.
Posted by: Dave Tufte at Sep 13, 2007 8:26:39 PM
One other thing: nobody ever mistook me for a great economist (even 15 years after getting my Ph.D.), but I was able to teach myself to be a hot sh*t programmer amongst economics faculty in a couple of years. The economics was much harder, but I'm still sure that's where my comparative advantage is.
Posted by: Dave Tufte at Sep 13, 2007 8:29:07 PM
I saw an article online last week that purported to have a list of the top 10 hardest to fill jobs for employers.
Number 1 was a "sales rep" job that required a bachelors and averaged $40K annually.
Sweet.
In reality, the average college student probably very rarely does exactly what they went to school for, outside of fields such as engineering, medicine, et cetera.
I don't even want to speculate on who the average college grad is that is taking those hard to fill sales-rep jobs.
As for CS, I know anecdote only goes so far, but of the successful IT/programmer types that I know, none of them have a college degree, and one of them is flying around in his own private jet.
Posted by: Ray G at Sep 13, 2007 9:52:20 PM
All aspiring Wall Street types read "Liar's Poker" by Michael Lewis (an ex-salesman at Salomon Brothers during the '80s).
Posted by: baiano at Sep 13, 2007 10:17:29 PM
"All aspiring Wall Street types read "Liar's Poker" by Michael Lewis"
A MUCH easier read than Barbarians At The Gate.
Posted by: Half Sigma at Sep 14, 2007 11:15:57 AM
Perhaps the real market failure is that no one has come up with software that allows economists to easily create their models without investing a ton of time in line-by-line coding? But don't look at me to correct it, I'm an EE who went into analog, in part to avoid the all the coding the digital folks have to do. Of course that isn't to say there aren't plenty of opportunity to do coding even as an analog designer.
Posted by: mtc at Sep 14, 2007 11:23:15 AM
Wow! I can't believe all the similar examples here. I started college as a CS major and ended up taking home a bachelors in econ. After three years at the bank I left to stay at home with my newborn son... and get started on my masters in CS. I think the lesson is that MR specifically appeals to CS/Econ cross educated individuals.
Posted by: Nathaniel at Sep 14, 2007 1:18:36 PM
I don't see any market failure here. We have RA's to do programming! As a former RA and now one who works with an RA, my experience suggests there is efficient specialization of labor. Economists who want to do programming ask RAs to do lit reviews, and economists who want to do economics ask RAs to do programming.
Posted by: Cparibus at Sep 14, 2007 2:31:24 PM
I started out at Ball State in 1999 as a Computer Science major, switched to Economics and now I am one semester from my MA in Econ from GMU.
If it turns out we have a surplus of economists, I may have to head back to computer science...
Posted by: Dave T at Sep 14, 2007 2:45:50 PM
I was a math major, and now I'm in graduate school in math. However, given the volatility in the labor market for teaching assistants at my school, I'm taking programming courses in case I lose my assistantship. I don't want to be a programmer in the long run, but it might be useful in the next few years.
Posted by: Lucas at Sep 14, 2007 8:34:00 PM
Oh heck, why not add my voice to the chorus. Started out in EE, finished with a CS undergrad, worked as a programmer for 8 years or so, never liked it much to be honest, considered an MBA, but was fascinated with public policy type questions, so decided on an Econ MA instead (was even thinking about going for PhD too)... but hated the econ MA (mathematically fatuous and methodologically blind and incurious, but that's just IMHO)... so now I'm coding up prop trading strategies for a fixed income desk at a bank. Not bad, but I still wish I was solving the world's problems. Nobody will pay me to do that though.
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