The world is flat

Recently, I read Thomas L. Friedman's book entitled The World is Flat. If you want to better understand the world that we are living in today, I would strongly suggest this book. 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 his 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 ne longer be a top of the line source of income.

One of the advantages of the flat world is that companies no longer have to rely 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 engineer industry. There is an increasing number of companies moving their coding work to foreign engineers who will work for less money.

But 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.

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.