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Software Engineering Grads Lack the Skills Startups Need

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Re: Software Engineering Grads Lack the Skills Startups Need

#41

Post by paxys »

all_blue_chucks wrote: post #25
paxys wrote: post #7

The skills startups want are taught at coding bootcamps, not universities. The degree is called computer science for a reason.

Most major schools offer degrees called Software Engineering. Most Computer Science students are looking for careers in Software Engineering. So ultimately it is called computer science for the wrong reason.

What schools? I don't know of any such degree at MIT, CMU, Berkeley, UIUC or any other top school. At best it will be a single course or some added certification to your degree, and even then they will teach you software engineering processes, not Node.js and React.

Re: Software Engineering Grads Lack the Skills Startups Need

#42

Post by pjmlp »

zaphod12 wrote: post #21

I didn't even know schools had 'Software Engineering programs. I've met plenty of Computer Science grads, though. It's truly different. Engineering is more like trade school, Computer Science is foundational. I'll probably hire you with a CS degree, but I know I'm going to need to teach you how to be a software engineer.

In Europe computing university degrees tend to be mix of CS and Software Engineering.

If you want a pure CS, usually it is a maths degree with major in computing.

Re: Software Engineering Grads Lack the Skills Startups Need

#43

Post by sigstoat »

all_blue_chucks wrote: post #25
paxys wrote: post #7

The skills startups want are taught at coding bootcamps, not universities. The degree is called computer science for a reason.

Most major schools offer degrees called Software Engineering. Most Computer Science students are looking for careers in Software Engineering. So ultimately it is called computer science for the wrong reason.

> Most major schools offer degrees called Software Engineering.

name three.

Re: Software Engineering Grads Lack the Skills Startups Need

#44

Post by peterlk »

ascales wrote: post #5

I think that at an even more basic level than hard skills, some graduates lack knowledge in things like basic problem solving, abstract thinking or the ability to switch between languages quickly. It's interesting to see how straight-A students who study well and test well don't make the transition from the academic environment to a job.

I have a pet theory about this.

Your whole life has goal posts laid out for you. You go to elementary school, get good grades so you can get into honors classes in middle/high school. And you do this again for college. Everything is quantitatively measured. How many questions did you get right? How many days did you attend school? How many extracurricular activities did you participate in? How many hours did you volunteer? All check boxes that other people hate laid out for you so that you can be measured in the funnel. And, artually, for some people this process can continue in their career. You get good grades in college, then you get an internship at BigCo. Then you get a job at BigCo. On and on until you die.

The problem is, you never had to figure anything out. So if you ever decide to do something non-standard or if randomness hits you too hard, or if someone along the way deems you "not good enough", now you're off the track. And you have never had to set your own goal posts. If you have to be constantly told what to do, employers are not going to want to hire you.

I think the lack of critical thinking goes hand in hand with an inability to function without rulebooks and structure.

Re: Software Engineering Grads Lack the Skills Startups Need

#45

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

geebee wrote: post #10

Really? Cause it seems, based on my interviews, startups couldn't care less about my background in leading customers through beta demos, collaborating with scientists, participating in sales presentations and outreach, writing documentation, or any of the issues described here. They do seem awful interested in whether I can find all matching subtrees in a binary tree, though. Which, now that I think about, is the one…

>I have had to find minimum cost paths in a tree, though.

Umm... every path is a minimum cost path in a tree, because there’s exactly one path between any two vertices.

Re: Software Engineering Grads Lack the Skills Startups Need

#46

Post by geebee »

cephlanod wrote: post #26
lalaland1125 wrote: post #14

Of course. The software engineering grads lack the essential skill of willing to be paid peanuts.

More like lack of will to work on uninteresting things, they usually get more than enough peanuts to live comfortably.

They’re certainly well paid enough for their land lord to live comfortably.

Re: Software Engineering Grads Lack the Skills Startups Need

#47

Post by andrewljohnson »

geebee wrote: post #10

Really? Cause it seems, based on my interviews, startups couldn't care less about my background in leading customers through beta demos, collaborating with scientists, participating in sales presentations and outreach, writing documentation, or any of the issues described here. They do seem awful interested in whether I can find all matching subtrees in a binary tree, though. Which, now that I think about, is the one…

The thing about all of those skills is they are all soft skills, that can be taught quickly on the job to the right candidates. Whereas a deep ability to solve a technical problem cannot be taught in a reasonable amount of time to most people.

Asking someone to find the matching subtrees in a binary tree might not be the best interview question, and to some extent it is kind of trivia for "did you grok your CS education well" - but the point of algorithms questions overall is to see if the candidate, when confronted with a tricky problem, will solve it.

And no, these tricky problems don't come up all that often, and you're often just doing basic coding plumbing work. But the candidates who can solve these problems can do all the plumbing work too, and when confronted with a tricky problem, they can get past it. And they also may innovate in an algorithmic way where a less deeply technical developer will either get blocked or come up with a worse solution.

Re: Software Engineering Grads Lack the Skills Startups Need

#48

Post by logfromblammo »

CodeCube wrote: post #6
logfromblammo wrote: post #2

“When you join a startup, there’s a lot of emphasis on the design of the application, reusability and clean code, and the ability to conduct and undergo code reviews, as well as the ability to think of and build systems that can scale based on users and geography,” he says. I got a good, long laugh out of this. This describes the exact opposite of my experience in a startup. None of those things were ever a concern u…

I mean, early stage startups fit your description, sure ... but I can't imagine many startups surviving much traction if those things don't start being looked at soon enough. Of course, some do (see twitter's Fail Whale), but I'm guessing the vast majority of startups that fail to scale ... well, they fail

There may be some confusion in my mind between companies that are only recently embarked upon a new business venture, and those who are already bringing in sufficient revenue to bootstrap further growth, but are adopting a generic "startup" branding strategy in order to shape their work culture and attract further investments.

That is, after being an indisputably young startup, the business declines to transition its identity into being a growing small business, and remains a self-described "startup" because it is secretly a huge business that is still in its second or third instar, ready to moult, and to also seem like a cooler place to work than it actually is, now that the HR department has multiple permanent employees.

The emergency all-hands pivot brainstorming meeting just doesn't seem like it can even take place in the same building as all those design discussions and code reviews.

Does anyone else think that "startup" has become a branding strategy rather than a descriptive term?

Re: Software Engineering Grads Lack the Skills Startups Need

#49

Post by sharadov »

Very funny!

"When you join a startup, there’s a lot of emphasis on the design of the application, reusability and clean code, and the ability to conduct and undergo code reviews, as well as the ability to think of and build systems that can scale based on users and geography"?

I don't know which startup he worked for that was doing all this and still managing to stay afloat! Startups want you to crank out features and get clients in, everything else is a failed strategy!

Re: Software Engineering Grads Lack the Skills Startups Need

#50

Post by kasey_junk »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #47
geebee wrote: post #10

Really? Cause it seems, based on my interviews, startups couldn't care less about my background in leading customers through beta demos, collaborating with scientists, participating in sales presentations and outreach, writing documentation, or any of the issues described here. They do seem awful interested in whether I can find all matching subtrees in a binary tree, though. Which, now that I think about, is the one…

The thing about all of those skills is they are all soft skills, that can be taught quickly on the job to the right candidates. Whereas a deep ability to solve a technical problem cannot be taught in a reasonable amount of time to most people. Asking someone to find the matching subtrees in a binary tree might not be the best interview question, and to some extent it is kind of trivia for "did you grok your CS educat…

“The thing about all of those skills is they are all soft skills, that can be taught quickly on the job to the right candidates”

Citation very much needed. If anything my experience suggests I can teach people with “soft skills” how to do algorithms and data structure tricks much easier than the opposite.

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