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Ask HN: Stats on People Leaving Software Engineering

3 points by dnissley ↗ HN
I was reading https://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/26/opinion/now-hiring-if-you-re-young.html which claims that:

According to a survey conducted by the National Science Foundation and the Census Bureau, six years after finishing college, 57 percent of computer science graduates are working as programmers; at 15 years the figure drops to 34 percent, and at 20 years -- when most are still only in their early 40's -- it is down to 19 percent.

I can't seem to find the original survey, does anybody have any idea where I could find it?

Also, since this story is from 1998, does anybody know of any more recent figures like these?

1 comment

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JMTQp8lwXL
1. Some move into management as they progress in their career.

2. Data collection could be misclassifying people we typically think of as "programmers" and they're not being counted due to job title being "software engineer".