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Mixed Signs On the State of IT Education
snydeq writes "Advice Line's Bob Lewis comments on the mixed state of IT education in the US, which sees some students graduating with computer-related degrees despite never having written a line of code. And while some institutions are emphasizing the value of teamwork in their curricula, an approach that fosters specialization in lieu of uniform standards, others are simply advertising their 'success rates' in graduating students. 'Education is a marketplace, and if you have the money and want to buy, you can find someone willing to sell,' Lewis writes. In other words, 'If you want a degree that indicates you know something about computers without having to actually know very much about computers, you can get one.'"
There are diploma mills that crank out such types for exorbitant fees--Phoenix U, Strayer, etc.--but I don't think the big names are exempt. I once met a University of Maryland College Park grad (B.S. in computer science) who didn't understand pointers and who couldn't grok hexadecimal math. These shortcomings notwithstanding, she was enrolled in their graduate program.
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
Every certification test I've ever taken measures, not knowledge, but rote memorization. Seems that the tests are created by people with no understanding of the subject matter. Questions are created by simply taking material literally from the study material, context and real-world applicability be damned.
As long as you can remember the study materials (especially the company specific terminology) long enough to get through the test, you pass. Understanding/knowing anything useful gets you nowhere.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I've actually seen this more from people who don't have a degree. I've had several people apply for jobs that think they are geniuses because they taught themselves to program. I should have kept an email one of them sent me a few years ago after I told him he didn't have the skills to be a senior developer. He went off about how how he starting programing when he was 15 and how awesome he was. By the way WTF and STFU are not proper acronyms for business correspondence. All the top developers in the company started programming when they were teenagers, then they went on to get degrees, and then they still need at least another 6 years of experience before I categorize them as senior level. Some people have 20 years and they still never make it to senior level. The only exception I've seen is a kid who started working for me when he was 16 and worked 30 hours a week while he finished out high school and then college. He actually had 6 years of experience by the time he graduated.
I can usually get an idea of skill level by talking to people, but occasionally people are just good talkers. So I have a coding test. I give them a simple set of requirements and set them down in front of an IDE and have them write an application. The requirements are to display a list of users with add, edit, and delete capabilities. The test takes an hour and it doesn't have to compile or be complete. I'm just looking for how people approach it. I've had people actually complete the application in an hour using XML as a data store, others may get a few classes written, some people produce nothing or cut and paste something from the internet that makes no sense. This weeds out the talkers from the doers very quickly.
Huh? That hasn't been my experience. Most fresh-faced college graduates in my experience tend to be extremely nervous and well-aware of their lack of experience.
I should have specified it in my post I guess, while my background has been in software development, I work under the business side of my company at the moment in a solution and business application role, so the majority of degrees we deal with are business (logistics mainly) based. It probably does make a significant difference in attitudes.
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We just went through an interview cycle.
It was bad...
I'm not a great software engineer... but I'm a decent one.
The hardest thing I ever had to do was go through these resumes. Everyone seems to know the game. I compare there resume to mine, and yeah.... I couldn't tell the difference.
Two of our candidates had masters degrees in computer science. Couldn't even talk about variable scoping. It wasn't a trick question or anything. I was blown away. I had a literal WTF going on in my head. Are universities that desperate for funding and grad numbers, they will pass anyone.
The other spend 10 years at a bank doing ASP.NET development. The first question I ask people... is what topic would you like me to ask you a question on? So I ask him what little I know of web development... (impersonation, authentication, how do get a message box up...)
I was amazed at how you spend 10 years doing development and not learn anything.
Another I thought would be a good guy to train. He had 5 years at Nortel... seemed like he had hardware exposure. Lots of fancy words on his resume... nothing behind it.
We have a coop student now in her 3rd year at the University of Waterloo (my university... a supposed top engineering university in Canada)... calls me up to solve a problem. I help her out... I tell her to step through some code... she says what? Apparently she has never ran a debugger before. Hooooowwwwwww!!!!
I almost feel the pain HR and recruiters must go through. I'm sure somewhere in the bank of resumes we get are some good candidates... how we'd find them... no idea.
To an extent, I saw it coming as software is viewed more and more as a commodity job. Top talent is not going to enter the field. Top talent has gone back to traditional medicine, legal...The industry could burn through some of the older better trained talent from the old days... but those candidates are dwindling in number. I'm still in Canada, and all we have left are 45 year old ex-Nortel people and the last bits of talent from the tech boom of the late 90s.
And now we have a talent shortage. And you can't replace a grade A engineer with a grade C project manager, a grade C product manager, a grade C requirements analyst, a several grade C programmers.
Nothing gets done. It's like taking all the C students you had in high school and seeing if they can somehow solve the complex calculus problem. Some jobs just require high caliber individuals.
You can't replace a good lawyers with a team of secretaries and a requirements analyst either.
But I digress in my frustrations :P Maybe the industry just needs some good consolidation and the good people can form good teams again.
And maybe... just maybe... we can get back to having senior engineers, and real mentors, and training people.... ah the dream world I live in.