What Skills Should Undergrads Have?

kramed8 writes "As a student myself, after reading the recent 'Slam' article on Java I really began to be concerned with the path of my education. I am currently attending a small Canadian University as a 3rd year Computer Science and Business student set to graduate next year. What seems to have troubled me from reading the article and user comments is that I do not feel as confident as I want to be in C, ASM and other related low-level programming topics. I was taught C++ in my introductory courses, with subsequent classes using C# or Java. My education has not been particularly difficult or time consuming to get good grades, so I have spent my free time dabbling in topics and languages that interest me (ie Multiple GUI Toolkits, Python, Linux). How can I spend my free time in the next year to prepare to enter the work place with a proper toolbox of skills? From what I have been told, there are more jobs for Java and Data Warehouse development teams compared to lower-level programmers. As an undergrad, what skills should I be trying to attain now to further my employability in the future?"

Comments

Free Time at School

[Njoyda Sauce]

Parties and Women right? Oh.. forgot this was /.

Don't overlook people skills

[TechForensics]

People skills should not be overlooked. It is important you be able to get people to like you.

Re:Don't overlook people skills

[keenada]

No, it is important to be able to get along with people. Being liked by people isn't necessarily a good thing to pursue, because people will detect that you're trying. It's a fact of human nature. Trying to be liked is seen (for better or worse) as manipulative. In my opinion, as a Canadian post-secondary grad working in IT for three years, your biggest asset will be your ability to reconcile your people skills and your technical skills. A lot of Information Technology work in Canada is basically massive companies saying "We want to understand this objective, or corner this market, and we want to do it using modern tools." That's a pretty big problem set, and is going to require both a lot of analytical problem-solving, and a lot of communication. Whether you focus more on the technical or on the people aspects, never lose your ability to work in either.

Re:Don't overlook people skills

[EastCoastSurfer]

True, but you can boil the book down to 2 basic things (that I've found anyways).

1) Remember names!

2) Be genuinely interested in other people. Everyone has something interesting about them. Figure out what it is and then let them talk about it. Remember, whoever talks most in a conversation is generally going to think it was a good conversation.

Re:Don't overlook people skills

[Maxo-Texas]

Les Gibson's book "People Smart" from the 1960's is also magical.

It adds
1) Smile the first second when you meet someone (tho tricky if you are a very pretty female).
2) Imagine you MUST say "yes" 9 times before you are allowed to say "no" to a co-worker. This does many wonderful things. a) respects their opinions b) lets them do things their ways c) you are perceived as likable and non-critical d) when you do rarely say "no" folks stop and listen because you respected them and you only say "no" when it is really important.

Re:Don't overlook people skills

[Run4yourlives]

Do people really need a book to get along with people?

Short Answer: yes.

Long Answer: Many technically adept people are often misunderstood, uncomfortable around people, and unfamiliar with the rules of social conduct. It has little to do with being sleazy, and more to do with trying to improve your communication skills. What you take as a given is a learned skill for most of us.

Think of the people you've met you you've thought were assholes, arrogant, insecure, and fake. Chances are, they were none of the above; rather they just came off that way because they didn't know how to properly handle the nuances of social behaviour.

Aiming to rectify that is never a bad thing.

If you want to be a developer

[Safety Cap]

Then read "The Pragmatic Programmer," especially "GOALS" on pages 14-15.

Other than that, the only skills you need are

1. The willingness to admit you don't know jack, and
2. The desire and commitment to learn.

The hard part: once you learn a thing or three, you need to go back and do #1 and 2 again. Forever.

Re:If you want to be a developer

[sm62704]

The hard part: once you learn a thing or three, you need to go back and do #1 and 2 again. Forever

A fellow named Dennis Ringering, one of my undergrad instructors, was heard more than once telling some knowitall punk "I've already forgotten more than you've ever learned".

Repeat after me...

[east coast]

Practice saying "Would you like fries with that"

I wish you the best of luck but unfortunately you're going to see a lot of really good answers and they're all going to be right. Personally I would do whatever I like to do but become more robust with it. Knowing six languages on a beginners level isn't as good as knowing one ot two in-depth.

Re:Repeat after me...

[ari_j]

Better yet, learn at least three vastly different languages at at least a high intermediate level, or even master them. When you are confronted with a problem and immediately see its solution in, say, C++, Lisp, and Ruby, you will be able to quickly choose the right tool for the job (where "tool" could mean "closures" or "objects" just as easily as it could mean "Lisp" or "C++"). Even if you don't have that tool available to you (if your employer requires you to use Java, for instance), you will still be able to solve the problem faster and more elegantly.

Ask prospective employers

[Dragonshed]

You will likely get both good and bad opinions in response to this question here on slashdot, but my best advice would be to ask this question of employers that you might be interested in working for.

Re:Ask prospective employers

[StaticEngine]

Agreed.

One of the best things I did was to shotgun a few letters to prospective employers telling them how highly I thought of their company, and asking what I should focus on if I wanted to be hired there. The vast majority of them sent me back a "we'll keep your resume on file" letters (when I had not in fact sent a resume, but it was still good to know how impersonal these companies were, and learn that I probably didn't want to work there), but one CG Effects company in particular wrote a three page letter back stressing certain coursework and areas of expertise that I should focus on. While I never wound up applying to that company due to other circumstance, it was very valuable to hear from industry professionals, and get an informed opinion.

I suspect this type of answer to your question would be much more valuable than a random smattering from the /. peanut gallery, although you probably wouldn't get to be amused by someone writing back that they're allergic to peanuts, and that I'm an insensitive clod.

Good luck!

Personal finances and Confidence are the two

[GenKreton]

First s learning personal finances will give you an edge on nearly every other student graduating. Know how to balance your finances, plan, budget, etc.

Second is confidence. Confidence in the skills you do have an ability to gain new ones. Have confidence in interviews especially. Confidence enough to demand more sometimes, too. Confidence directly addresses your questions of how to make yourself more employable.

The skills you need and success in life should follow those two. Actual skills programming have less to do with you getting employed than you may think.

Requirements lacking in most graduates

[MSTCrow5429]

Spelling, grammar, basic math, an understanding of economics, and a knowledge of the outside world.

You got free time?

[techpawn]

As an undergrad, what skills should I be trying to attain now to further my employability in the future?

If you have too much free time and think your classes are too easy, see if you can get an internship or co-op at a local company. First of all NOTHING beats real world experience, Secondly you can see what they're looking for and what the competition is asking for as well. Sometimes those internships doing crap help desk is a good way to get your foot in the door at a company.

The only that really counts

[Yold]

is experience. Look for a job doing something in the field, do your job well, and get a letter of recommendation.

The article yesterday I think was more aimed at people who don't understand that basics of whats going on behind the scenes. For example, its expensive to convert between formats of numbers (int->double etc), or how to use bitmasks/shift bits.

A couple of things...

[Capt James McCarthy]

If you can afford the 'free time' see if you can apply for any internships at different large companies. Or see if a smaller one would take the chance with you interning with them. The price is right for them, and you get to tail someone who's more experienced in the field.

You can also look up some open source projects that need assistance (there are many of them that do) and see where you can help on them. Open source projects are a great way to get experience and critiquing your own skills.

You can also learn these three words:

"Hello. Geek Squad."

Don't forget "Engineering" skills

[SpuriousLogic]

One of the biggest things I see when hiring college grads is that while they understand how a computer works, why languages behave the way they do, and what a certain language syntax is, they have very little knowledge of how to actually build applications from initial concept to full delivery. This type of knowledge generally falls into the "Software Engineering" category. Learn how to write and read requirements. Learn how to do formal estimates from requirements. Learn about different software development life cycles. Learn about requirements traceability and testing. Learn about software patterns. A lot of these topics are covered in Masters degrees in Software Engineering, so those are good places to look at for books on it. Here is an example, you can look at the classes to find the books used http://www.cti.depaul.edu/academics/Pages/MSinSoftwareEngineering.aspx

Don't focus too much on the technical side

[antifoidulus]

You will, throughout your CS courses and professional/hobby work find out what you really like and you should gravitate towards that. If you are really skilled, then you should be able to pick up what you need to succeed.

That being said, here are the skills I think you should pick up. My only qualifications is that 2.5 years outside of undergrad I am earning $70k+ a year AFTER taxes and have had professional experience on 3 continents(Europe, NA and Asia). Here is the list in no particular order:

1. Pick up a 2nd major. Now of course there are "useful" majors such as science or business, and if that stuff interests you, great, but pick something outside of CS/IT that you REALLY enjoy and go for that. Even if it is film studies. For one, how many chances will you have after college to sit around a bar/coffee shop and discuss whether or not the feds in E.T. represent America's increasing xenophobia after being rattled by Japan in the first real post-war challenge to the US economy?
Secondly, having a 2nd major will catch the attention of recruiters who have to sift through piles of resumes that look the same and can really give you something to talk about at the start of your interview and allow you a pretty good segue into your tech qualifications.
Finally, a second major will allow you to look at problems from a different perspective and help your critical thinking skills, which are in much shorter supply in the IT industry than Java or Python coding experience IMO.

2. Learn another language. Again, there are "useful" languages such as Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Portugese etc., but if you are only learning a language for the money and not because you are interested in the people and culture, you are almost guaranteed to never become fluent. Even languages such as German can help you on the job. If you are working for a company and you and a rival company submit similar proposals for a German contract, and your documentation is in German and theirs English, who do you think is going to win? Plus, from my experience abroad, there is no better way to break the ice with someone in another country than to speak their language. I got a Software Engineering job offer in Connecticut with a small company totally based in Connecticut partially because of my Japanese language skills. The company has to go through a 3rd party to sell their software products in Japan, and they could have really used someone with both a knowledge of the technical side as well as the linguistic side to aid the translators and to double check their work.

3. Study/work abroad. (Shameless plug alert):I found an internship working at an R&D Lab in Japan by working with a group called IAESTE that finds and exchanges internships all around the world. I had to do a lot of work too, for instance I hosted our first intern from Argentina. But after work, there is a lot of drinking! Nothing more fun than a room full of drunk college students from the world over! The internship itself was an amazing experience in terms of both the technical and cultural aspects inside and outside the office. Not to mention I instantly stood out among my peers when it came time for job interviews. It also helped me land the job I have today, working as a software engineer in Germany. Oh yeah, and tons of fun and drinking, cannot stress that enough!

4. Related to the above: work an internship, at home and/or abroad. I also worked in a steel mill writing software, which was a unique experience in itself.

Above all, don't worry about individual technologies. Stay abreast of the news and don't be afraid to dive into something new every few years at the minimum. Oh, and its college, have fun! You have the rest of your life to work your ass off, and you should still work your ass off in college, but the nice thing about college is that for most students, they are young enough to work their asses off AND still have enough energy to go out and party.

Not true

[ShatteredArm]

I work with Indians all the time in my line of work, and the one thing they are all in agreement about is that their universities are not as good as ours. They simply don't have the education to compete with us, and if they are American-educated, they typically stay in America. The jobs they are getting are basically the equivalent of junior programmer positions, where they're told which module to write and they write it; or lousy maintenance jobs. There will always be a demand for developers who understand other lines of business (e.g., finance, health care, etc.), can work well with people, and have good analytical skills (for analysis, design, etc.).

Which brings me to my suggestion: learn about other lines of business, because most likely you'll be writing software with actual business users. If you limit yourself to only jobs writing software libraries, you might not have as many options.

Writing

[MonkeyBoyo]

Often the biggest skill lacking in technical people is they cannot write very well.

I've seen some really bad reports written by fairly good technical people.

Spending several semesters taking writing courses is a much better investment than learning a new language (which you should be able to do on your own and which will happen during your career).

Being able to explain things clearly on paper will put you in an important position in any development group and will lead to the most career growth.

Re:Too much free time?

[SQLGuru]

What do you wish to do with a computer? This is probably the best line in the parent post.

Computer Science is a very general field with many specific applications of that knowledge. The skills needed to excel in one instance might be completely wrong for another instance. You should really evaluate what area you want to work in and learn the skills needed in that area.

Games programming? C/C++, understanding of 3D space, understanding of low level hardware (consoles), etc.
Embedded programming? Tuning, tuning, tuning, and some C/C++
Business Apps? Database skills (Oracle or SQL Server would be my first stops, DB2 a close 3rd), Java or .NET, WebServices, and how to work with someone else's solutions (vendor solutions)
etc.

The other skills you need you can't learn from a book. You need to learn to integrate with a team. You need to learn how to write a good design spec (and not for a semester long "project", but for a real application that takes upwards of a year to work on). You need to learn to accurately estimate. etc. To learn these, I recommend that you find a very good mentor at your first place of employment and absorb from them.

Layne

You should be good

[tritonman]

The important thing is that you have learned programming initially or at the very least, been taught the fundamentals of some language like C or C++ which will let you understand how things like memory allocation works and how pointers work. If you understand those concepts you will be good. You don't need to be proficient in ASM, but understanding the concepts is important, you should learn that type of thing in an Operating Systems structure class though. Once you have learned the fundamentals of C or C++, I would say to do everything else in an easier language like java or C#, because you shouldn't spend your time focusing on your memory allocation and such when you are just trying to understand the structure of a redblack tree.

Re:You should be good

[lgw]

If you want to do "infrastructure" programming, such as OS development, language development, clustering, virtualization, storage, etc, it's vital that you learn C and C++, and have a firm understaning of pointers and recursion, data strustures and algorithms. In my experience most jobs in this broad area are still done in-house. Your job will be particularly uninteresting to a non-geek, but pay well. If your problem domain is the computer itself, you had better understand every layer you work with down to assembly.

If you want to do "business" programming: inventory, payroll, CRM, SCM, vertical apps in a variety of fields, than by all means learn Java. But it's your business skills that will make you stand out, and as these jobs are largely outsourced, you very much need the people skills to work as a consultant, or manage consultants. If your problem domain is business operations, you had better understand how a business operates.

If you want to do "embedded" or "realtime" programming, again the low-level details are important, but I caution you that these jobs pay significantly less than infrastructure jobs (despite often being harder). Also, non-realtime embedded programming is shrinking as a field, as the cost of hardware needed to run a full Linux or BSD OS install goes down every year. The world will always need realtime programmers, however.

If you want to do "games" programming, I have no idea what skills you'll need, but you'll be paid crap and worked until you burn out and quit the industry, so do you *really* want to write games?

Re:You should be good

[LithiumX]

I'll wholeheartedly second everything Tritonman says here. You don't have to become a low-level master to be a good programmer, but a basic working knowledge of C and C++ is the key to understanding the majority of languages you'll face later (including ones that do not yet exist). Assembly teaches you why software is laid out the way it is, as that's what all compilers must eventually boil down to in one way or another. You don't need to be able to compose a serious tool in Assembly - you don't even have to know how to write anything useful in it. However, knowing the basics will give you a more solid framework for all later programming skills you tackle.

However, here is another piece of advice. You'll hear many advising you to maintain a wide array of general skills, and they're absolutely right. On the other hand, I've been a programmer for about a decade, as well as an administrator (win and unix), graphic artist, management, and a wide array of other job descriptions - each of which I am well above average in, but none of which I specialize in (though my resume paints me as primarily a programmer). I'm well versed in more languages than anyone I know (including assembly language for four different chipsets), and I'm at least somewhat experienced in an even greater number. I'm able to easily install, configure, troubleshoot, and often hack many different operating systems. I'm also known at my job for being able to pick up almost any skill quickly, as-needed (such as studying for a CCNA, my most recent hobby) - I'm the resident fix-it-all here, especially when the task requires knowledge that none of us have at the time, or would normally require experts from a number of different areas. I have a range of experience that, in my line of work, is more comparable to the 50-something old-school techies that are inevitably found in this industry, than it is to my peers (who are in their late 20's and early 30's, have some range, but are usually unfamiliar with subjects outside their specific skill set).

I'm not bragging though, and here's why.

For all my wide range of skills, I've found I have been valued less in the corporate world than those more limited specialists. True, I can complete projects that normally take a whole team to do - and often faster. True, I've shown time and time again that I can find solutions and create software that even our better-paid experts haven't been able to seriously attempt. That doesn't matter, though, because as an accomplished generalist at a (large and growing company) I've found myself sidelined over and over, forced into a job of very limited scope that is filled with specialists (in ASP.Net in this case) who I now have to compete with (in the one area I was always weakest at - web design). I've had the empty pleasure of seeing my old tasks pulled away, one by one, so they can be moved into specialist departments (with the end result apparently being the same quality of work, but requiring a much larger work force). This wasn't due to overload (I can automate almost anyone out of a job) or poor work on my part, but simply a matter of corporate architecture. All of these skills I have, all of these years of experience, are now going utterly to waste, not because I have an inflated ego and believe myself to good for my present task, but because all I can do now is advise others on how to do the jobs I used to do, while I perform a now-monotonous role where quantity of output is the only way you're judged. That sort of thing, though, doesn't attract much attention or pay. If only I'd spent more time on one of those many subjects, mastering it more completely, because total mastery over one subject is eventually more useful than significant proficiency in many subjects.

The long and short of it is... expand your horizons. Learn new skills, and maintain the habit of studying, even long after you're out of school. Grow and adapt, and become at least marginally familiar with as many areas of technology as possible, because th

Re:You should be good

[philipgar]

Remember one thing though, there are a fairly limited number of "infrastructure programmer" positions around, whereas embedded systems programming is HUGE. The future of computing (and much of its past) is not in the box that sits on your desk, or the laptop that you carry. The future is embedded devices. Cellphones, cars, ipods, HDTVs, game consoles, media players, planes, controls, smart appliances, everything. The majority of computers are embedded, and this trend is only accelerating.

However many of these devices are starting to resemble more "traditional" computing platforms. They run a full OS, have virtual memory support, FPUs, etc. However one thing they do have in common is that they run on a limited set of hardware, and often have strict memory, performance, and power constraints. The skill set does not really need to include knowing more than basic ASM programming (if you used SPIM in a computer architecture class you should be okay). You need to know the fundamentals of computer architecture, and a class on OS is very important (you must understand some of the different memory models etc).

But, as a CS student, your job is not to know the details. Your job is not to know the languages and the tools, your job is to learn the algorithms, to learn the thought processes, to learn how to design. What tools you know how to use aren't very relevant, and will change over the next couple years anyhow. Being adaptable, and knowing the fundamentals, and having strong problem solving skills is far more important. The rest will come. Any company that won't hire you because you don't know their specific languages and tools is either not looking for a student out of college, or is looking for an IT monkey to write code for them. If they don't want a CS student, beware, as the job is likely quite boring anyhow.

Phil

Information Interview

[snowwrestler]

One of the best things I did was to shotgun a few letters to prospective employers telling them how highly I thought of their company, and asking what I should focus on if I wanted to be hired there. The letter approach is not a bad one, but I think you can learn more in person. Try finding some folks who work in the field in which you'd like to work, and take them to lunch and pick their brain. This is often called an "information interview"--you stress up front that you're not looking to get hired, you're just hoping to gain a little insight. You might surprised how accomodating folks will be. The fact that you're young and still in school actually works FOR you in this context.

How to find folks to interview? Networking. Work your contacts. Good sources include friends of your parents, your friends' parents or their friends, people your professors might know, etc. Or, find local events or societies or clubs that attract folks from your target industry. Or just call up companies you admire. This aspect of the information interview is great training for later in life, when you really want to get a job.

Read Joel on Software

[Soskywalkr]

ISBN-10: 1590593898

Could recommend this book more highly to an up and coming programmer.
This is the first book that we ask our interns to read.

The second book (for those pursuing management positions) is
"Leadership and Self-Deception"
ISBN-10: 1576751740

Re:Reminds me of a joke...

[SatanicPuppy]

Oh please. I've worked in the business for a decade. My advice for an emerging undergrad? Remember that you don't know crap.

School is about a foundation. You're worried about what you know about C? You may never in your life program in C. Or you may program in it every day. Either way, you're not going to get your first job based on your college programming experience, not unless you did something so wildly off the charts that you could have programmed it in RPG and people'd still be lining up to hire you.

What you need most to remember is that it's your work once you're out in the world that will define your career. It's a hell of a lot more important to buckle down and learn in the real world, than it is to leave college thinking that you "know" how it's supposed to be.