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Palantir Thinks College Might Be a Waste. So It's Hiring High-School Grads

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Re: Palantir Thinks College Might Be a Waste. So It's Hiring High-School Grads

#91

Post by godelski »

vasilzhigilei wrote: post #17

There really needs to be a trade school for software engineering. Not just a short boot camp, either. A rigorous 4 year degree that focuses on industry relevant skills and hands-on projects. The biggest reason I got my 1st job out of college at Cloudflare was because I worked on a lot of personal projects and self learned Go and got experience with Postgres, Redis, and basic frontend. These things were not, or barely…

  > because I worked on a lot of personal projects and self learned Go and got experience with Postgres, Redis, and basic frontend.
Do you think you would have been able to do that project to the same caliber and as fast had you not had your degree?

  > These things were not, or barely covered in my CS degree.
The degree isn't there to teach you a specific technology. Those come and go. Some people will work on web like you while others will work on games, graphics, machine learning, databases, languages, or other things. The degree is to teach you the generalized principles that all these things share so that you can learn the specifics you want. They try to cover a broad base to give you exposure because you likely don't know what you want to do or what you like until you get some exposure. That broad base also makes you more effective working with those other niches.

The degree isn't to teach you a niche, it is to make it effective in the broad field.

  > No wonder new grads nowadays are struggling to get jobs. Schools aren't preparing them well for jobs.
What do you expect to be taught in only 4 years? Maybe you learned Postgres and Redis in the summer but I'm certain you wouldn't have learned it that fast had you not had other programming experience. It's not hard to learn one language once you already know another. Especially if that other language is low level or "mid" (like C/C++ or Java)[0]. The skills transfer even if the specifics aren't identical.

The problem is tragedy of the commons.

We question why train a junior if they're just going to leave instead of questioning why they will leave. We laugh at someone not "negotiating good enough" or hiring new employees at higher wages than we'll offer in raises.

We believe a new senior will be more effective out the gate than a mid level engineer with years of experience in the codebase. We act like institutional knowledge is meaningless. The senior might solve more jira tickets but their lack of institutional knowledge may lead to more being created and more complicated code that isn't leveraging existing libraries.

We act like training juniors isn't a shared community cost that builds a pipeline that we all rely on. Sure, maybe Google trains a junior that leaves for Apple, but Apple trains a junior that leaves for Google. Those costs balance out.

Juniors are having a hard time getting jobs because we've become myopic. We've created the richest companies ever but have become incredibly stingy. We care much more about the quarter than the decade. The customers became the shareholders instead of those buying the things we sell. We spend pounds to save pennies.

[0] it feels weird to call C "high level" in the days of interpreted languages and no memory management

Re: Palantir Thinks College Might Be a Waste. So It's Hiring High-School Grads

#92

Post by rtaylorgarlock »

CommonGuy wrote: post #27
vasilzhigilei wrote: post #17

There really needs to be a trade school for software engineering. Not just a short boot camp, either. A rigorous 4 year degree that focuses on industry relevant skills and hands-on projects. The biggest reason I got my 1st job out of college at Cloudflare was because I worked on a lot of personal projects and self learned Go and got experience with Postgres, Redis, and basic frontend. These things were not, or barely…

Switzerland has this and for basically every other job as well. Apprenticeships are very common here, I did mine as a "programmer"

I further like how much diversity is packed into compsci programs in CH, e.g. time at the Paul Scherrer Institute

Re: Palantir Thinks College Might Be a Waste. So It's Hiring High-School Grads

#93

Post by jstimpfle »

mindslight wrote: post #80
jstimpfle wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it college, or is the age where many young people visit college, that the start to mature?

It's both. Starting to mature at that age, independence of living on your own, and applying yourself to some kind of real work, but without all of that being colored by unrelenting abuse by the financial treadmill. One could probably replicate that kind of slack outside the university environment, but you still need some kind of direction to be learning rather than merely hanging around and playing video games, so su…

Work has provided me with plenty opportunity to learn, at a foundational level even. It's also a question of how you approach work. Sometimes it's as easy as asking for a little bit of extra time or loudly considering a little side project as promising the insight that's required for the next task.

Work has grounded me in such a way that in hindsight I regret staying around uni as long as I did instead of entering the workforce as early as possible. While I was less than a brilliant student, I wouldn't go as far as saying that uni was a waste for me. There are some things that I might never have learned otherwise. But I would love to know the other paths I could have taken in my profession.

Re: Palantir Thinks College Might Be a Waste. So It's Hiring High-School Grads

#94

Post by mdhb »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #46
miltonlost wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "memorizing random subjects" is all college is to you, or all learning is to you, then yeah, probably is a waste of time.

Does a computer science major or engineering degree really need history or humanities classes? Sure, it might make more rounded humans but they are completely unnecessary. However, most colleges require these unnecessary classes to get a STEM degree.

It’s the difference between getting an education and learning a trade… so yes.

Re: Palantir Thinks College Might Be a Waste. So It's Hiring High-School Grads

#95

Post by mindslight »

jstimpfle wrote: post #93
mindslight wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's both. Starting to mature at that age, independence of living on your own, and applying yourself to some kind of real work, but without all of that being colored by unrelenting abuse by the financial treadmill. One could probably replicate that kind of slack outside the university environment, but you still need some kind of direction to be learning rather than merely hanging around and playing video games, so su…

Work has provided me with plenty opportunity to learn, at a foundational level even. It's also a question of how you approach work. Sometimes it's as easy as asking for a little bit of extra time or loudly considering a little side project as promising the insight that's required for the next task. Work has grounded me in such a way that in hindsight I regret staying around uni as long as I did instead of entering th…

Talking about tech we can actually put this in very concrete terms.

What shapes of technologies have you been paid to learn? Do they promote decentralized individual liberty like secure p2p communications? Or are they top-down-control corporate-empowering centralizing technologies like webapps and bitcoin?

I'd say there is a prominent skew for the types of things you can get paid to work on, because software that creates individual freedom intrinsically means creating distributed wealth that can't be easily collected to pay returns on investment. And if you don't even have a general understanding of the whole gamut of what is possible, you likely won't even know what you are missing.

Re: Palantir Thinks College Might Be a Waste. So It's Hiring High-School Grads

#96

Post by kloop »

apical_dendrite wrote: post #34
beefnugs wrote: post #5

Also its around the age you might start learning empathy, dont want that

This is a really important point. A lot of the "locked in" young types that I've seen in the startup ecosystem have very little experience of how the world works, combined with a tremendous arrogance about their own capabilities. They see the wealth and the power that some people have acquired in tech, and they associate that with success with goodness - or they become completely amoral. I'm not sure how much these p…

You can't bank on college making you more moral than MBAs. All of those people went through college

Re: Palantir Thinks College Might Be a Waste. So It's Hiring High-School Grads

#97

Post by godelski »

oa335 wrote: post #4

https://investors.palantir.com/governance/executive-manageme... Four out of the five top executives of Palantir earned degrees from top 10 US universities.

So they're people that can't recognize the factors that led to their own success? Sounds like they have a promising future

Re: Palantir Thinks College Might Be a Waste. So It's Hiring High-School Grads

#98

Post by raddan »

evmar wrote: post #44

My first job was a dotcom startup who heard via social connections I was a bright high school student who could program. I think I was paid $15/hr to write Windows GUI code. In retrospect I think they were just happy for the cheap labor and I didn’t know any better. There was no mentorship or any other useful growth to make up for the low pay.

On the other hand, you were probably also learning on the job, which meant they were paying you to learn. Not a bad arrangement, especially if they did not demand senior-level code from you.

I was also fortunate to get paid to learn web development in the 90s. This was a work-study job so I was barely paid anything (I think it was something like $100/wk). But I was thrilled to be given a computer in an air-conditioned office. The alternative was to do some other dumb work-study job like making sure students swiped their meal plan cards when they walked into the cafeteria. Although it took me awhile, that job is what set me on the path I’m still on now.

Re: Palantir Thinks College Might Be a Waste. So It's Hiring High-School Grads

#99

Post by quequon »

bdangubic wrote: post #77
vasilzhigilei wrote: post #17

There really needs to be a trade school for software engineering. Not just a short boot camp, either. A rigorous 4 year degree that focuses on industry relevant skills and hands-on projects. The biggest reason I got my 1st job out of college at Cloudflare was because I worked on a lot of personal projects and self learned Go and got experience with Postgres, Redis, and basic frontend. These things were not, or barely…

it is not “engineering” - calling software development “engineering” is the craziest thing we’ve been able to squeeze through as an industry. trade school won’t help here and 4 (even 8) year degree won’t help. at 4 years by the time you finish sh*t you learned the first year are obsolete. and everyone needs to spare us “the fundamentals” as that doesn’t exist - in my 3 decades in the industry the absolute worst colle…

> it is not “engineering” - calling software development “engineering” is the craziest thing we’ve been able to squeeze through as an industry.

Even ignoring the 'craziest thing' hyperbole in light of an industry that gave the whole planet depression and anxiety to increase 'engagement' how could you possibly defend this position?

Definition of engineering:

> The application of scientific and mathematical principles to practical ends such as the design, manufacture, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems.

Yup. Do all of that on the daily.

Re: Palantir Thinks College Might Be a Waste. So It's Hiring High-School Grads

#100

Post by quequon »

mikert89 wrote: post #16

Highly intelligent kids at 18 are ready for the real world. Its a waste of time to make them memorize random subjects

Saw a meme on this exact logical fallacy of the 'well-trained dog'.

Panel 1:

Human standing, arms out stretched in a shrug saying, "Why should I study science, biology, mathematics, and physics? It is useless, I will never use it. I will not be a scientist."

Panel 2:

Same human with a rageful expression saying, "5G gives cancer. Vaccines have Mind Control Chips for the new world order. The earth is flat. I saw it on YouTube."

.

Albert Einstein credits the humanities with his successes in physics.

> "Otherwise he with his specialized knowledge—more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person. He must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions and their sufferings in order to acquire a proper relationship to individual fellow men and to the community. "

> "This is what I have in mind when I recommend the 'humanities' as important, not just dry specialized knowledge in the fields of history and philosophy."

> "Overemphasis on the competitive system and premature specialization on the ground of immediate usefulness kill the spirit on which all cultural life depends, specialized knowledge included."

https://www.nytimes.com/1952/10/05/archives/einstein-stresse...

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