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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

#161

Post by slothtrop »

shagie wrote: post #105
slothtrop wrote: post #57

Even startups should be willing to train. The skills really aren't that hard to pick up with the right mindset and knowledge a CS grad ought to have. We had an intern come in that was still stuck in that student-mode of needing to be told everything and not asking pointed enough questions. After a few weeks they were up to speed and productive. Frankly even experienced workers will still require a period to absorb sp…

They should. Often, they aren't. There are a number of reasons there - some don't have the time. > Because startups need to bring their products to market quickly, applications are built iteratively, with rapid prototyping. The timing of the product release is crucial because it has a direct impact on acquiring customers and affects the bottom line. Significant delays can put a company out of business. While time to…

Concede that time may be a factor, in which case, companies have little choice but to shell out real money.

> mentoring is a lost ROI in many cases.

What investment? Grads are cheap, and time to productivity as I argued isn't that long, before which they aren't merely learning. Most of the investment here is on the worker's part, and greener pastures aren't available as quickly as productivity sets in. If you're fresh out of school and working, leaving a company is unthinkable in the first year, unlikely in the 2nd.

Re: Software Engineering Grads Lack the Skills Startups Need

#162

Post by sharadov »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #137
sharadov wrote: post #49

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 an…

We do none of the above! We just keep tacking on new features to snag more clients. On the plus side, I work 38 hours a week and not a minute more, and I get paid above median for the privilege.

We're a Series D/E company, and we still don't do all that!

Re: Software Engineering Grads Lack the Skills Startups Need

#163

Post by ummy »

taneq wrote: post #112
donw wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Candidly, I would say that college does not even provide the base skill-set. In the Real World(tm) of building software, you will work on systems built over years by other people, many of which have long since left the project or company. The level of integration tests, unit tests, documentation, and automation will depend entirely on the culture of the organization. Databases, low-level I/O, sorting operations, and…

> Candidly, I would say that college does not even provide the base skill-set. This is true. The things of value (from an industry POV) that you actually learn at university are: 1) You learn to learn. You learn to pick up an entirely new area of knowledge (albeit sometimes based on prior learning) in six months to the point where you're proficient enough to pass an exam in it. 2) You learn to work to sometimes-unrea…

Most companies don't give grads the opportunity to learn on the job.They want experienced professionals.

Re: Software Engineering Grads Lack the Skills Startups Need

#165

Post by ummy »

GhostVII wrote: post #122

At least in my program (University of Waterloo Computer Science), there is barely any emphasis on practical things like modern tooling, different roles of a software engineer, etc., with the exception of some of the upper year courses. Instead it is largely theoretical - data structures, calculating runtimes, how the networking stack works, theory of distributed systems, etc. You learn practical things, but only enou…

That's true,,intenships really helps.

Re: Software Engineering Grads Lack the Skills Startups Need

#166

Post by ericd »

ghaff wrote: post #117
ericd wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that was a pretty common feeling in 6.001, especially among those who hadn't done much programming in high school. At the time, it was taught in Scheme (a Lisp), which no one I knew taking it had any experience in, so everyone was on sort of equal footing there, at least. And more generally, it seemed to be a pretty common approach there to throw students into the deep end and let them figure it out - people li…

Yeah. Course 2. '79. :-) There's probably an expectation these days that students have some degree of exposure to computers. When I took an intro to computing course (FORTRAN) it was pretty much no expectations. But times have changed. And I found 6.001x useful. But then I had a lot of experience with computers even if not programming full-time professionally.

Haha so you know the feeling well.

Makes sense, guessing not many high schools even had one computer until the Apple II, which I guess would have been a bit after you graduated.

Side note, I love that it's possible to take a course like that online for ~free now.

Re: Software Engineering Grads Lack the Skills Startups Need

#167

Post by ghaff »

ericd wrote: post #166
ghaff wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Course 2. '79. :-) There's probably an expectation these days that students have some degree of exposure to computers. When I took an intro to computing course (FORTRAN) it was pretty much no expectations. But times have changed. And I found 6.001x useful. But then I had a lot of experience with computers even if not programming full-time professionally.

Haha so you know the feeling well. Makes sense, guessing not many high schools even had one computer until the Apple II, which I guess would have been a bit after you graduated. Side note, I love that it's possible to take a course like that online for ~free now.

I didn't touch a personal computer until a few years later in a job where we had an Apple II to do some engineering calculations. High school was BASIC using a teletype connected to a local community college--and that was pretty forward looking at the time.

I did take a FORTRAN course in college which people would consider very rudimentary today. This was the textbook :-) https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6795090W/A_Fortran_coloring_...

But I didn't really use a computer to speak of (other than as a text editor in grad school) until I was working--and later got into programming as a hobby.

Re: Software Engineering Grads Lack the Skills Startups Need

#168

Post by ericd »

ghaff wrote: post #167
ericd wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha so you know the feeling well. Makes sense, guessing not many high schools even had one computer until the Apple II, which I guess would have been a bit after you graduated. Side note, I love that it's possible to take a course like that online for ~free now.

I didn't touch a personal computer until a few years later in a job where we had an Apple II to do some engineering calculations. High school was BASIC using a teletype connected to a local community college--and that was pretty forward looking at the time. I did take a FORTRAN course in college which people would consider very rudimentary today. This was the textbook :-) https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6795090W/A_Fo…

Oh, that's a pretty sweet looking textbook. Reminds me a bit of http://landoflisp.com/

Re: Software Engineering Grads Lack the Skills Startups Need

#169

Post by kthejoker2 »

mike00632 wrote: post #116
andrewljohnson wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is the old adage, "you can teach technical skills but you can't teach personality."

I can handle most personalities within 2 sigma, coach where I need, what is very hard to change is mindset.

People who won't try new things, because they'll suck at it.

People who don't Google (they know how, they just don't) because they think all answers all received wisdom, not something between a SWAG, an opinion, and a mental model.

People who don't read things outside their domain because that's someone else's job.

People who confuse having 1 experience for 7 years with 7 years experience.

People who think you have to be an expert scientist, engineer, architect, philosopher, and mechanic to change a light bulb, so they never even tried.

People so worried about imposter syndrome they'll never deliberately exert any curiosity for fear it will be seen as ignorance.

Re: Software Engineering Grads Lack the Skills Startups Need

#170

Post by eikenberry »

ummy wrote: post #163
taneq wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Candidly, I would say that college does not even provide the base skill-set. This is true. The things of value (from an industry POV) that you actually learn at university are: 1) You learn to learn. You learn to pick up an entirely new area of knowledge (albeit sometimes based on prior learning) in six months to the point where you're proficient enough to pass an exam in it. 2) You learn to work to sometimes-unrea…

Most companies don't give grads the opportunity to learn on the job.They want experienced professionals.

You just mean they don't hire junior developers. Everybody learns on the job, even experienced professionals.
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