51–60 of 152 posts
I have said it a million times before and I will say it as long as necessary to fix our employment-education conundrum: you do not learn how to work by sitting in class, you learn to work by going to work. We need publicly subsidized apprenticeships to replace the assumed role of the outrageously expensive 4 year college degree as the primary means of acquiring skills for the modern labor force. There is a place for…
I think the major disconnect here is in the industry's general inability to recognize ability through the standard interview processes. On one hand you have the common whiteboard coding interviews popular among the big tech players (and much of the rest of the industry). I'm definitely biased here, as someone who is average/below average at these types of interviews but an above average (I hope) developer, but I don'…
People are involved and whether or not someone will work out is no more deterministic than figuring out if two people dating would result in a long term relationship.
The biggest problem with coding whiteboard problems is engineers fall into the trap of thinking the problem needs to be hard, which actually reduces the value of the test.
A coding test is simply to weed out idiots. That's why FizzBuzz is a simple problem. It's a negative filter. Acing such an easy test doesn't mean you'll be an awesome engineer but failing an easy problem almost certainly means you won't be an awesome engineer. Substitute with a hard problem and a pass signal doesn't get much better but a fail signal gets far noisier and you're going to get an awful lot more false negatives.
There's too many tech workers, we're all screwed!!
Yawn.
I have said it a million times before and I will say it as long as necessary to fix our employment-education conundrum: you do not learn how to work by sitting in class, you learn to work by going to work. We need publicly subsidized apprenticeships to replace the assumed role of the outrageously expensive 4 year college degree as the primary means of acquiring skills for the modern labor force. There is a place for…
No study, other than those sponsored by the industry, has ever shown a shortage.
Wages, both for new graduates and established professionals, have been stable in the engineering and programming fields. Starting salaries for new computer science graduates were up about 3% in Spring 2011, according to NACE; a 2011 DICE report, in spite of claiming a shortage, concedes that overall tech salaries are up 1%; a San Jose Mercury News article in July 2011 reports a strong job market in Silicon Valley, but also states that wages are up only 3% since 2009. None of these figures indicates a labor shortage.
A 2007 Urban Institute study found that the universities are producing more than enough graduates at the bachelor's level in STEM.
Figures for students graduating with computer science degrees cannot be used to determine whether we have a shortage of people qualified for computer science jobs. Most people in the computer field, including those in software development, have their degrees in fields other than computer science.
In 2012 congressional testimony, Texas Instruments admitted that they have plenty of American engineering job applicants at the bachelor's level.
I have said it a million times before and I will say it as long as necessary to fix our employment-education conundrum: you do not learn how to work by sitting in class, you learn to work by going to work. We need publicly subsidized apprenticeships to replace the assumed role of the outrageously expensive 4 year college degree as the primary means of acquiring skills for the modern labor force. There is a place for…
I don't like the college system we have now, but switching to the extreme of apprenticeship is definitely not a good answer. Right now I'm an engineer, but with my rounded education, if I don't like it, I can go and switch to a myriad of other fields that I'm educated enough for.
The world already had apprenticeship systems, and it's not some magical system we forgot about. Apprenticeships lead to weird power dynamics that aren't very good for the individual, such as being indentured to your employer for providing the training.
The main problem I see with our education system is that it's inefficient, and growing too large and slow to keep up with modern needs. This doesn't mean a well-rounded education is a problem though.
Of course it's a lie. Like with many industries, worker 'shortages' only exist at the price level the corporations want to pay. So they artificially inflate supply to lower wages. Nothing new here.
If there are 4 people in the US who have the skills to do a job, but you need 8, you have a shortage. It doesn't matter how much you offer for the role, you only have 4 skilled workers.
Of course in the long run, that doesn't hold true.
I think the major disconnect here is in the industry's general inability to recognize ability through the standard interview processes. On one hand you have the common whiteboard coding interviews popular among the big tech players (and much of the rest of the industry). I'm definitely biased here, as someone who is average/below average at these types of interviews but an above average (I hope) developer, but I don'…
In my experience having too many side projects can be perceived as a negative for some employers.
I think the major disconnect here is in the industry's general inability to recognize ability through the standard interview processes. On one hand you have the common whiteboard coding interviews popular among the big tech players (and much of the rest of the industry). I'm definitely biased here, as someone who is average/below average at these types of interviews but an above average (I hope) developer, but I don'…
Lots of companies do that, fwiw...though I agree that many companies may benefit from doing it more instead of blindly following the "big tech" whiteboard style. Here's the thing about the whiteboard coding interviews: A) There's a huge false negative rate. I.E. a lot of good engineers get turned down because of a bad whiteboard exercise. B) The "big tech" companies know this and do not care . They have people who wa…
I have said it a million times before and I will say it as long as necessary to fix our employment-education conundrum: you do not learn how to work by sitting in class, you learn to work by going to work. We need publicly subsidized apprenticeships to replace the assumed role of the outrageously expensive 4 year college degree as the primary means of acquiring skills for the modern labor force. There is a place for…
Apprenticeships aren't a good answer either, though. They create too much of a caste system, and are very restricting. What if at 18 I don't actually know what I want to do? If I join an apprenticeship I'm learning one thing. What if I don't like that one thing? What if I get 5 years into an apprenticeship and realize I can't get to the level I want to be at? I have to start over from zero in another field? I don't l…
why do i feel a class separation from a BART maintenance worker? because they are organized and conscious and probably see us, fairly rightfully, as bougie.