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Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

insidehighered.com

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Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#31

Post by paganel »

watwut wrote: post #14
austincheney wrote: post #10

At the current job is the first time I have worked with young college graduates. It is interesting to see that some of the developers are humble and are completely ready for the corporate world while others are the opposite. It really comes down to personality and whether a person's personality has allowed them to practice more and work harder to learn a skill. These people tend to be much better prepared without the…

Sad prediction: overly confident will have better careers and will be seen as geniuses by people who don't work directly with them. They will have more responsibility sooner and even as they will make mistakes inittially (and some entirely), they will he excused and seen as leaders more then their humble peers. Incentives.

This only works in big or medium companies, fortunately being over-confident without actually delivering stuff gets caught pretty soon in small companies (because it directly and adversely influences the bottom-line). In other words, small-company bosses/owners don’t really care of how confident you are, they only care about actual work that makes the clients happy, so that the bills and the salaries can be paid at the end of the month. That’s one of the main reasons why I’ve worked only for small software shops in my career, I can’t stand the wannabe people who always brag about themselves without actually doing anything of value.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#32

Post by lr4444lr »

But Brandon Busteed, executive director of Gallup's higher education division, which also conducts research related to graduates and careers, said these sorts of definitions can vary

For instance, Gallup has found that generally an employer believes that "critical thinking" is coming up with new, original thought. But in an academic sense, it can mean more picking apart ideas in depth, he said.

Given that their definition of "critical thinking" (which is incorrect,) differs from the academic one, employers are probably responding on a completely different wavelength. That throws this whole survey into question.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#33

Post by hashkb »

It's silly to ask a college graduate of 20-25 years old anything about professional conduct. Can't we just appreciate that they're young and excited? Anyone with a career a few years long knows exactly how professional to expect a recent graduate to act at their first job; it's everyone else's job to mentor them and set a good example of professional behavior.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#34

Post by austincheney »

araes wrote: post #4

Implied in finishing university is the expectation that you have been taught what you need to make it in the work place. Its part of the social contract. Its what I paid you for right? Naturally, they answer with high confidence in their readiness. People who have worked a long time are in part answering for themselves. They look back at how much they've learned, changed, and developed. How much they had to learn on…

> Implied in finishing university is the expectation that you have been taught what you need to make it in the work place. Its part of the social contract. Its what I paid you for right?

Then the person misunderstood what education is and reality is about to slap them in the face. I started a career before graduating college and now have two simultaneous careers. The benefit of having multiple simultaneous careers is that you can see the comparative strengths and weaknesses of each (things other people don't see) and adjust yourself accordingly.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#35

Post by bbarn »

ekidd wrote: post #19
rootlocus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, I know 6 other languages, I can learn one more... I doubt you professionally know 6 languages. There's a lot more to learn about the runtime, frameworks and tools of a language than there is syntax.

OK, I might have a couple more languages than the average mid-career developer, but I don't think I'm that much of an outlier. So here goes. I have, in the past 10 years, professionally and successfully worked with C++, Scheme, Ruby, a couple generations of JavaScript and Rust. And I've written a whole pile of shell scripts. These were all "first tier" languages in which I was up-to-date at the time. I've also, as a…

> But if you dropped me in a new job with a new language, I could be delivering business value and clean code inside of two weeks

This is one of the things I consider to be a trait of a senior developer, when making hiring decisions. I understand why places post jobs that want X years experience with Y stack, because they don't want to feel like they have to teach "the basics" to someone at a high level, but I've found "the basics" is just what you've described in that sentence. Good professional software developers are language agnostic - even if they've spent the last 10 years on a single language in practice.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#36

Post by austincheney »

__s wrote: post #30
austincheney wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. There are unique personality traits that qualify the millennial stereotypes which are not present in older age groups. Young people will always believe they are ready for the world if all their elders tell them such no matter that this messaging is baseless and inaccurate. The problem is a level of personal fragility and lack of contrary frame of reference. Fortunately there is a minority population in th…

Kids these days, amirite? https://mentalfloss.com/article/52209/15-historical-complain...

Millennials - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hER0Qp6QJNU

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#37

Post by bbarn »

austincheney wrote: post #10

At the current job is the first time I have worked with young college graduates. It is interesting to see that some of the developers are humble and are completely ready for the corporate world while others are the opposite. It really comes down to personality and whether a person's personality has allowed them to practice more and work harder to learn a skill. These people tend to be much better prepared without the…

I don't think the "rockstar" act is a millennial thing. There have always been people like that in any field, or social group. Some people will always compensate for their flaws in ability with their strength of personality, and with our industry that just means painting the "rockstar coder" persona, because there are some people that seek that out.

That's why good hiring practices have to be used, even when you feel like it's a waste. Give everyone the same critical evaluation and don't allow yourself to skip questions in interviews because you like the person, etc. (I'm not accusing you, just saying as a rule)

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#39

Post by sandworm101 »

Zanni wrote: post #7
nostrademons wrote: post #3

I'm always a little skeptical of these sorts of surveys because it's hard to tease out what people believe about themselves because it's true vs. what people believe about themselves because it's useful . I remember that when I was a new grad, there was a very large part of myself that held a realistic appraisal of my abilities and was therefore scared shitless about my ability to make it in the working world. I was…

Related: these aren't even the competencies that employers have selected as most important, only the ones that the firm doing the survey selected. So how important are they really? Where do, for instance, "Career Management" and "Global/Intercultural Fluency" stack up against "Can actually do the job we're hiring them to do, e.g. program a computer"?

Intercultural fluency is code for people that are less likely to say the stupid things, either to customers or coworkers, that result in lawsuits.

Career managment is code for people who can maintain professional qualifications without supervision, who book the course for themselves before something expires.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#40

Post by tachyoff »

rootlocus wrote: post #6
araes wrote: post #4

Implied in finishing university is the expectation that you have been taught what you need to make it in the work place. Its part of the social contract. Its what I paid you for right? Naturally, they answer with high confidence in their readiness. People who have worked a long time are in part answering for themselves. They look back at how much they've learned, changed, and developed. How much they had to learn on…

> But, I know 6 other languages, I can learn one more... I doubt you professionally know 6 languages. There's a lot more to learn about the runtime, frameworks and tools of a language than there is syntax.

How does this meaningfully contribute to the discussion? I mean that in earnest. It comes across as mean, or at the very least, immature. Out of that entire comment, this is what you zero in on?
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