Microsoft, Amid Dwindling Interest, Talks Up Computing as a Career

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Microsoft, Amid Dwindling Interest, Talks Up Computing as a Career

March 1, 2004
 By STEVE LOHR




CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 26 - Bill Gates went on a campaign
tour last week, trying to reinvigorate his base, as they
say in politics.

The number of students majoring in computer science is
falling, even at the elite universities. So Mr. Gates went
stumping at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, M.I.T. and Harvard, telling
students that they could still make a good living in
America, even as the nation's industry is sending some
jobs, like software programming, abroad.

"Will this create more competition? It will," he told
students at M.I.T. on Thursday. "It means the U.S. will
have to keep its edge in skills."

Later, noting fears of widespread job losses, he said in an
interview, "But people are way overreacting."

Mr. Gates urged the students to stay in the game, no matter
where they worked - for Microsoft, a rival, a start-up, a
research lab.

Matthew Notowidigdo, who came to M.I.T. five years ago and
will receive his master's degree in computer science in
May, has chosen not to. The head of the department said Mr.
Notowidigdo, a 22-year-old native of Columbus, Ohio, was
one of his brightest students, who would be welcomed at any
computer science Ph.D. program in the country.

But Mr. Notowidigdo has decided not to be a software
engineer. Instead, he plans to head to Wall Street this
spring to join the bond trading desk at Lehman Brothers,
where he will work on research and analyzing fixed-income
securities. While he may pursue a Ph.D. someday, he says it
will be in economics rather than computer science.

Enrollments are down at the best computer science schools,
where the potential stars of technology's future are
groomed. Professors say there is less enthusiasm for the
discipline among students, and they worry it may be more
than a lingering disenchantment after the dot-com bubble
burst.

In an effort to counter the trend, Mr. Gates, who
personifies technological optimism and the potential
payoff, sought to reassure students that their futures were
no less bright in an era of outsourcing. The effect of
computer technology, he told them, is just beginning and
opportunity abounds. Computing, he added, is an ideal field
for fine minds to make a difference in society.

"We need your excitement," he told students at Harvard.
"Most of these jobs are very interesting and very social -
you work with lots of smart people. I'm excited about the
future of computing, and I'm excited to see how each of you
can contribute to it."

But Mr. Notowidigdo's expertise in software design and
programming are also valuable tools on Wall Street, as
sophisticated computer programs and models are increasingly
used to sniff out profit-making opportunities in the
financial markets.

And he said his summer job last year, doing programming
work for a New York investment bank, also influenced his
plans for the future. The bank's technology department was
outsourcing some software work to India, and as part of the
project, programmers from Wipro, a large India outsourcing
firm, were brought to New York. Mr. Notowidigdo was
impressed at the level of their skills.

The outsourcing trend, Mr. Notowidigdo explained, "factors
into my thinking about what I want to pursue as a career."

His current path as a technologically adept investment
banker, he decided, gives him "a broader set of skills and
is less risky than software engineering."

Mr. Notowidigdo arrived at M.I.T. in 1999, when
technological exuberance was in the air and the allure of
computing was at its peak. Now, even at elite schools like
M.I.T., the number of students choosing to major in
computer science is down.

John V. Guttag, head of the university's electrical
engineering and computer science department, points to the
"worrisome" downward trend. In the current academic year,
229 sophomores selected his department as their major, down
from 282 in 2002 and 342 in 2001, a 33 percent decrease in
just two years.

Nationally, there is a similar trend. The Computing
Research Association's annual survey of more than 200
universities in the United States and Canada found that
undergraduate enrollments in computer science and computer
engineering programs were down 23 percent this year.

M.I.T., like other universities, is seeking to counter the
trend by emphasizing that computer science is increasingly
a collaborative discipline, involving work with experts in
other fields of business and science to solve all kinds of
economic and social problems. "What we have to emphasize is
that a good computer science education is a great
preparation for almost anything you want to do," Professor
Guttag said. "It's a terrific time to be a computer
scientist."

That was the central theme of the Gates tour, which was
planned and carried out with the precision of a
presidential event. Political veterans were consulted.
Aides did a "walkthrough" two weeks ago, checking
locations, logistics and travel times. Mr. Gates met with
dozens of professors at the five campuses and nearly 5,000
students attended his talks.

After it was over Thursday night, Mr. Gates, pacing in a
basement conference room at Harvard, explained his purpose.
"Computer science is about to be able to accomplish things
that people have been working on for decades," he said.
"Yet there doesn't seem to be the buzz, excitement and
understanding of that so that the best young people are
drawn into it."

With each lecture, his message was that because of
ever-faster machines, improved software and the accumulated
wisdom of decades of research, computer science was on the
cusp of genuine breakthroughs in areas like speech
recognition, artificial intelligence and machine-to-machine
communication. These advances may take five years, 10 years
or more, but they are not so far off now, he said. The
trouble with the dot-com years, Mr. Gates told the
students, was the delusion that technological revolutions
happen overnight, without years of hard work by bright,
talented people like them.

Yet already, Mr. Gates told them, the established
disciplines - ranging from biology and astronomy to
industrial design and finance - increasingly rely on
computer analysis and modeling. And the new disciplines,
like nanotechnology, are deeply computational.

In that regard, he got no disagreement from Mr.
Notowidigdo, the M.I.T. student who has decided to enter
the field of financial services. He said he had no regrets
about his choice of major. "It opened so many doors for
me," Mt. Notowidigdo said. "And understanding computational
technology is going to be essential to almost any field in
the future."

Mr. Gates said electronic commerce had not yet even begun,
and that huge gains in communication, convenience and
productivity are on the near horizon. He acknowledged that
there were challenges to be overcome in areas like privacy
and computer security, skipping lightly over the fact that
security flaws have bedeviled many Microsoft products. But
even the headaches, he said, are merely intriguing problems
for smart computer people to conquer, and profit from.

Mr. Gates scoffed at the notion, advanced by some, that the
computer industry was a mature business of waning
opportunity. In one question-and-answer session, a student
asked if there could ever be another technology company as
successful as Microsoft.

"If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence,
so machines can learn," Mr. Gates responded, "that is worth
10 Microsofts."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/01/technology/01bill.html?ex=1079158195&ei=1&en=8bc59e7df0b214eb 

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