Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers • Hacker News Board

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#71

Post by austincheney » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 7:12 PM UTC

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…

The hiring process spends all its time to evaluate if a candidate meets minimum viable functionality. Instead my recommendation is to evaluate all candidates as senior developers and set them up for anxiety failure and watch how the handle the result.

I can train somebody to be a good coder, but I will not be their parent.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#72

Post by k6k7f7uky8ki » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 7:13 PM UTC

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.

You really can't be productive and deliver value without first knowing most major frameworks of a language inside and out? I think this is where the disconnect is. A lot of people can deliver value while learning anything new as they go, which certainly counts as knowing the language professionally...

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#73

Post by Kluny » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 7:28 PM UTC

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #42

When you give every kid a trophy, they all think that they are winners. We have raised a generation of children who have been infantilized and sheltered throughout their childhood and college years. The inevitable result, unfortunately, is a generation of adults that lack the ability to tackle adversity, think critically, or make valid self-assessments (something that is difficult even for the most enlightened). We h…

Oh fuck off with the trophies. I never wanted them. I got a 6th place ribbon for high jump, a "most improved shooter" trophy in the range club, and a "participant" ribbon in an elementary school basketball league where they explicitly didn't keep score during games. I knew I was a terrible athlete and the ridiculous trophies and ribbons were humiliating. I certainly never got the idea I was a winner.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#74

Post by crazygringo » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 7:39 PM UTC

Is this anything more than the general human trait where most people think more highly of themselves than others do of them? E.g. where 90% of people tend to consider themselves above-average, when mathematically it can only be 50%? Colloquially called the "Lake Wobegon effect" after the fictional lake area where "all the children are above-average". See [1].

There doesn't appear to be any evidence that this has anything to do with students and employers specifically.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#75

Post by autokad » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 7:46 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #74

Is this anything more than the general human trait where most people think more highly of themselves than others do of them? E.g. where 90% of people tend to consider themselves above-average, when mathematically it can only be 50%? Colloquially called the "Lake Wobegon effect" after the fictional lake area where "all the children are above-average". See [1]. There doesn't appear to be any evidence that this has anyt…

that ("90% of people tend to consider themselves above-average") can mathematically be true if you have a skewed distribution.

suppose that 90% of drivers have no accidents at all, while the other 10% have 10 accidents per year. Then the average (mean) is 1 accident per year, and fully 90% of drivers are better than average!

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#76

Post by tomtoise » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 7:55 PM UTC

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #42

When you give every kid a trophy, they all think that they are winners. We have raised a generation of children who have been infantilized and sheltered throughout their childhood and college years. The inevitable result, unfortunately, is a generation of adults that lack the ability to tackle adversity, think critically, or make valid self-assessments (something that is difficult even for the most enlightened). We h…

Of course, if your stereotype is correct, this does beg the question about who decided it was a good idea to GIVE 'the kids' all these trophies.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#77

Post by autokad » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 7:55 PM UTC

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…

when a manager complains about oral/written communication they are NOT talking about how you spell things. its things like properly alerting them when issues arise, not being to terse yet not overly wordy emails, knowing what topics are appropriate on conference call and when others can be talked about offline, etc.

i myself am not the best at communication, but those problems do not lie in the fact i didnt bother to use caps in a hn post.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#78

Post by ryandrake » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 7:55 PM UTC

robbick wrote: post #66

peruvian wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

Agreed - I think the 'its how the message gets conveyed' only applies to really trivial things, like 'expresso', or whom vs who where the incorrect version is so clear that it doesn't affect the readability.

Here's the thing about the "expressos," "irregardless," "for all intensive purposes," and "mute points" out there: Even if the meaning is clear and the communication is successful, these convey a carelessness and sloppiness that, as a great engineer, you don't deserve! As someone who knows what you're doing and takes pride in your craft, things like bad spelling and usage needlessly undermine your credibility.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#79

Post by jpeloquin » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 7:55 PM UTC

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…

Students may be interpreting professionalism / work ethic as consistency in studying and turning in assignments on time in the context of coursework. But the scale of problems that they need to solve in the workplace have a much greater scope in terms of time, complexity, and number of people involved. Employees need to integrate with the organization, not just do the equivalent of turning in assignments. Often the initial plan of work isn't complete or the right thing to do. Some fresh graduates have a tendency to latch on to some passing statement from a team meeting, work hard on that without doing any follow-up, and end up surprised when no one has a use for what they did. A professional keeps the big picture in mind and follows up with people so that course corrections are made and genuinely useful work gets done.

Colleges try to teach teamwork, but few team projects in coursework are sufficiently complex that they genuinely require teamwork. Since everyone in a course project is taking the same course, no one has irreplaceable expertise. The consequence is that students never have to learn how to work as an organization instead of individuals. The exceptions are club activities like (inter)national engineering design team competitions in which, as in business, genuine failure is possible and success depends on everyone's contributions.

Re: Overconfident Students, Dubious Employers

#80

Post by autokad » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 7:59 PM UTC

robbick wrote: post #66

peruvian wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

Agreed - I think the 'its how the message gets conveyed' only applies to really trivial things, like 'expresso', or whom vs who where the incorrect version is so clear that it doesn't affect the readability.

@ryandrak "irregardless" is a word