Funny, it sure doesn't seem that way to me. When I keep bumping into employers that:
- expect you to sign a "one-sided, forever" NDA before ever interviewing.
- expect you to slave away on some coding assignment on some weekend. When the work should be properly scoped as billable work
- ding you on not knowing skill X (or enough), but that you're a "great guy".
- insisting that Hackerrank is a good metric to measure coding competency (I thought that's what a CS degree was meant to do?)

Save it, employer. This is a hell of your own making!

Maybe I should show him the coding test I had to do a few years ago, just to land an interview there.

The essential problem was to implement a certain type of card shuffling approach; then to answer how many such shuffles would it take to yield the original card sequence, of size N

There was a gotcha with that question too: can this shuffle work for all sizes of N?

The answer was âyesâ(TM), of course...but brute-forcing your way to the answer was not going to cut it. You had to apply some abstract algebra math. Needless to say, I nailed it, and got the interview.

Thatâ(TM)s the value of a four+ year degree in coding.

...in Fire! Says the Amazonian Vorlon

I'd say your friend is quite fortunate to be wanted straight out of college, but here's the thing: the electronics company only PROMISED him a job when he graduates. As the old adage goes: promises are made to be broken...and in the tech world, so are verbal agreements and temp jobs.

SHOULD the electronics company follow through, he should still take the job, and find satisfaction in getting whatever real-world experience he can get out of it!
I had this idealistic dream of working for Blizzard, EA, etc..and you know what I discovered after I went through the endless programming challenges and interviews with them? Some things:

1) Game companies want MIT-level knowledge, but pay out retarded salaries for the talent, and work the talent to death...all for the glory of being THAT guy that worked on a AAA title

2) For each big game title on a store shelf at Fry's, I see 20 more titles collecting dust

You know what I say to that? BIG WHOOP!

A lot of game technologies are also used in many set-top-boxes, cinema, scientific programming, TV..and (some of) these companies PAY!
Games are interesting pieces of software, but I would rather work on the underlying technologies that make a game come together.

Now, for those game technologists that say I can't hack it, I'd be happy to show you my Linked in profile...I've worked at some NICE companies too, doing similar stuff. I'm allowed to my opinion too ;-)

Now, in the general tech world, job-hunting is almost as competitive as in game world. One really needs to be on top of their programming game with certain companies, and you even have to have some charisma too while interviewing.

Now, if your friend's job lead fizzles with the electronics company, then I'd say he should really pursue Blizzard and follow his dreams. However, dream jobs are still...jobs. He should really think about building up his professional programming experience, and work in the sub-domain he loves.

He'll eventually get there, if he gives it time and determination.

Good luck to him!

I did my 4+ yrs getting a CS diploma, and GED: what did those non-CS courses teach me wrt to my current job:

English: I can write SW spec documents and comment big blocks of my code with sufficient grasp of grammar that doesn't make me seem like a idiot (and even gives me extra points in credibility)

History: The ability to look back at past events helps you formulate a coding strategy for the future, and avoid mistakes

Art: CS derives from Math, and Math has been considered an art-form for thousands of years (hmmm, there's that History again)

Philosophy: You sometimes code in teams, and understanding that these other team-members are human beings, and understanding your team strengths/weaknesses/quirks, makes you work smarter, not harder.

So sure, you can skip all that, and hyper-specialize in CS, but that won't buy you as much as you think in the long-run.

I urge you to reconsider, impatient youth! ;-)

Ahoy! There be lotsa oil here, maties! ARRRRRRRRR! Air's a bit musty though, meeh could be worse!

Even if ATT were to add more towers in its ideal world, it still would not be enough. You're talking about a problem that scales linearly (adding more towers). In the case of iPhone adoption (through basic word-of-mouth and ads), I think it scales linearly, but faster (super-linearly), or even geometrically. So, throwing more towers into the mix won't necessarily help, because ATT will eventually hit the wall again or max capacity.

Even then, putting up towers brings up the NIMBY factor from home owners that don't want one put in.

Personally, I think this is one case where I would not mind some kind of tiered pricing scheme; it gives users more choice, but at the same time, makes them VERY aware of the bandwidth they are using, and the iPhone "battery-like" or gauge-like widget would make that really easy to do. When the widget turns red, stop using, or pay to play...but this is not QoS at all in the net-neutrality sense either..more like a good compromise.

Anyway, just my 0.02$...talk amongst yourselves.

C.