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Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

insidehighered.com

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Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#51

Post by walshemj »

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…

Did they goto private (public in the uk sense) schools? those type of schools inculcate there students with a master of the universe vibe.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#52

Post by walshemj »

greggarious wrote: post #41

Maybe it's because employers want >2 years experience from people straight out of college, and no one wants to train. Companies claim they don't want to train because you could just leave (at will) but it's relatively simple to draw up a contract that employees must pay back training costs if they don't stay at least a year or two.

Actually harder to do even in the USA - employers don't want to pay the market rate aka how capitalism works.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#53

Post by rootlocus »

walshemj wrote: post #49
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.

mm ok ill bite Fortran,BASIC,Perl,PHP,ASP,PL1/G Plus MySQL and the procedural languages T/SQl and PL/SQL.

I said I doubt it, not that it's impossible. And by professionally I meant you've read most of the canon books about these languages, you can explain what happens under the hood for any piece of code and you can debug, profile and write high quality idiomatic code in each and every language you listed.

And now, as per GP post "But, I know 6 other languages, I can learn one more..." you should have no problem learning C++ on the job after being hired for a senior C++ position.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#54

Post by tylergetsay »

hashkb wrote: post #33

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.

As somebody younger (and more naive) that is only 2-3 years into my career, I do my best to remain professional. What's some things to look out for?

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#55

Post by ryandrake »

bbarn wrote: post #37
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…

I like using the word "rockstar" to describe coders, because the word has similar negative connotations as in the music context. An actual rock star often doesn't (but sometimes does) have: classical music training, knowledge of the music literature, vision beyond their area of expertise, humility in the face of their equals or betters, a desire to learn and ability to change with the times, the temperament to fit well with the business side, etc.

If that's what you want to hire, go hire your rockstar coders.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#56

Post by MBCook »

ergothus wrote: post #43

Others have mentioned the vagueness and low value of the questions, but I'm particularly struck by the professionalism/work ethic one. Professionalism is tough, because we define it (roughly) as seeking the common expectations for the role, but one of those expectations is "professionalism". And "work ethic"...Im a gen Xer and I feel like millennials are getting dumped on more than the normal generational strife, to…

I have a feeling that many of these numbers would have looked similar 10, 20, 30 years ago.

Is the news here that these numbers are much lower than they used to be? Or just that we know them.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#57

Post by ryandrake »

> The AAC&U looked at some of the same measures as the association. Specifically around oral communication, students ranked themselves highly -- about 62 percent of students believed they did well in this area compared to 28 percent of employers. That and written communication showed the biggest gaps in the AAC&U report (27 percent of employers versus 65 percent of students).

Kind of difficult to disagree with this one. I know it's passé these days to worry about trivial things like correct grammar, spelling, and usage. I've had fruitless discussions on this very site where people will argue that it doesn't matter how you use the language if, ultimately, the message somehow manages to get conveyed. Terrible language skills are not just found among new grads though, I've seen them across the workforce, including appalling spelling in communications from the SVP level. There's a non-zero cost, too: the cost of having to get people to repeat themselves, the cost of ambiguity when your manager poorly communicates their wishes, the cost of misunderstood information bubbling up the chain to decision makers. It adds up.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#58

Post by peruvian »

ryandrake wrote: post #57

> The AAC&U looked at some of the same measures as the association. Specifically around oral communication, students ranked themselves highly -- about 62 percent of students believed they did well in this area compared to 28 percent of employers. That and written communication showed the biggest gaps in the AAC&U report (27 percent of employers versus 65 percent of students). Kind of difficult to disagree with this o…

> I've had fruitless discussions on this very site where people will argue that it doesn't matter how you use the language if, ultimately, the message somehow manages to get conveyed.

Most of the time terrible language does manage to hinder the message! But the writer doesn't realize this, because for them it's obvious. I had a coworker (who is almost 30 and a college graduate) with this very attitude. A lot of his code comments and documentation had grammar mistakes and quirks (Random periods. In the middle of phrases.) that made it very hard to read and thus understand.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#59

Post by sotojuan »

greggarious wrote: post #41

Maybe it's because employers want >2 years experience from people straight out of college, and no one wants to train. Companies claim they don't want to train because you could just leave (at will) but it's relatively simple to draw up a contract that employees must pay back training costs if they don't stay at least a year or two.

Companies don't "want" to train because employees "don't stay" but companies also don't provide incentive for employees to stay for more than a few years.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#60

Post by ericmcer »

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…

"What is your greatest weakness?". Everyone is expected to lie or warp reality a bit on this question. Interviewing is just a game and people learn pretty quickly to give the answers interviewers want to hear. The alternative to overconfidence is not great.
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