For new graduates, one bright spot

While the general job picture for college students graduating in 2009 is grim, it’s a heyday for those with degrees in computer science.

Aggressive technology firms continue to hire and need people with Web or programming skills, an Eastern Washington University graduate working in Silicon Valley told computer science students on the Cheney campus.

Alex Moskalyuk, who earned a master’s in computer science at EWU in 2003, came back to the campus Thursday to encourage students to consider jobs at Facebook, the fast-growing social network site based in Palo Alto, Calif.

After graduation, Moskalyuk moved to Silicon Valley to work for Yahoo. Two years ago he took a programming job at Facebook. “It’s a very dynamic company,” Moskalyuk said. “Out of 700 total employees, 200 are engineers. It’s team-oriented, and you end up working side by side with a lot of talented people.”

National job placement companies say computer science graduates are among the few being pursued by employers. Others, according to JobWeb.org, are electrical engineers, accountants and economists.

Starting salaries for computer engineers at Facebook are above $80,000, on a par with most other tech firms in that area. Moskalyuk said Facebook has 120 million regular users. It hosts more photos online than any other site, he said.

“Each time we gain a million users, more work is needed,” he said.

Stuart Steiner, who teaches computer science at EWU, said graduates with the strongest prospects have Web development or high-end programming skills. But other jobs exist in game design, network security and other areas.

Demand for computer science graduates also reflects a drop in computer science enrollments that followed the 2001-02 dot-com meltdown, said EWU lecturer Brian Kamp. Enrollments are about 15 percent below levels that preceded that downturn, he said.

Jordan Bondo, a 26-year-old student in EWU’s program, said he hopes to find a tech job in the Spokane area: “There are lots of jobs around here. You go online and look at the listings and you’ll see, there are all sorts of companies looking to hire (tech) graduates.”