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Can a New Type of School Churn Out Developers Faster? (dice.com)
Nerval's Lobster writes: Demand for software engineering talent has become so acute, some denizens of Silicon Valley have contributed to a venture fund that promises to turn out qualified software engineers in two years rather than the typical four-year university program. Based in San Francisco, Holberton School was founded by tech-industry veterans from Apple, Docker and LinkedIn, making use of $2 million in seed funding provided by Trinity Ventures to create a hands-on alternative to training software engineers that relies on a project-oriented and peer-learning model originally developed in Europe. But for every person who argues that developers don't need a formal degree from an established institution in order to embark on a successful career, just as many people seem to insist that a lack of a degree is an impediment not only to learning the fundamentals, but locking down enough decent jobs over time to form a career. (People in the latter category like to point out that many companies insist on a four-year degree.) Still others argue that lack of a degree is less of an issue when the economy is good, but that those without one find themselves at a disadvantage when the aforementioned economy is in a downturn. Is any one group right, or, like so many things in life, is the answer somewhere in-between?
Well cut out the fluff and filler classes and you can do it in 2-3 years.
Some of the 5 year thing is due to the way classes fall / fill up / the high number of required classes.
We don't need PE / GYM classes as required classes where just 1 class costs as much or more then a 2 YEAR gym membership.
There's a lot of reasons why some kids take 5 years rather than 4. Some double or even triple major. I know I gave some thought to doing a CompSci/CompE/EE major since the overlap between CompSci and EE cover just about all of your CompE requirements. Some choose to take a lighter load each semester so they can spend more time on each class and not burn out. Some are just slow and need to take extra time. Getting your prerequisites lined up for some classes can sometimes be tricky, especially at smaller schools with fewer sessions of the foundation classes.
There's all kinds of reasons why people take 5 or more years to get a 4 year degree. It doesn't change the fact that they're still not prepared to do the work when they leave school and the company that hires them has to finish the last 2/3 of their education.
vocational school / tech schools have there place but lot's of them have become just get people in on to the loans that have no cap and take anyone.
I'm friends with the principal of a local tech school. They've almost broken that stereotype. He said he can't graduate highschoolers fast enough. They're learning internet security, coding, CNC, 2015 automotive repair. I sat in on one of his tech classes, 16 year olds had a better grasp of how CAN networking works and how to debug problems in engines than a lot of PhDs. I'm trying to talk him into opening the school part time as a MakerSpace, it has better equipment than I had going though college. (Oscilloscopes, CNC machines, 3D printers, etc).
These are the trades of the next century. It's why H1Bs are being hired into the spot, a lot of these jobs don't need someone with a masters degree. They need someone that has been training to do it since they were 14-15. It's still how Germany structures their school system.
Not everyone needs to go to university. They have 21 century trades. It's why Simulator games are a huge hit there.
"Even though the average purchasing power is very different between say the UK and Poland, we actually sell more copies in Poland than in bigger Western Europe countries," he notes. "We also have lots of fans in developing market countries like Brazil or Turkey, and incredible number of players in China, but it's really hard to actually sell any games in those markets."
Meanwhile, the Farming Simulator series is a very similar story. Marc Schwegler, associate producer at Giants Software in Germany, tells me that the main audience for its annual farming series is kids, especially boys who love tractors. Oh, and farmers, of course.
Kids that grow up playing 'stupid simulation' games will be trained to run a fleet of automated trucks or tractors. We already see military implementation with drones. Doctors are starting to do it with DaVinci. You could work anywhere with fast enough internet. There are still things that require a human, we have the technology such that the human doesn't need to be where the actual process is going on.
IT is already doing it with support Apple and other companies have house moms with VOIP answering tech support questions.
"If you choose quantity over quality you get neither"
--Demming
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I have wondered more and more over the years whether the traditional CS curriculum is still relevant.
So many software libraries exist that take care of the low-level details these days.
Yes, but figuring out how to get a bunch of disparate libraries to work together amicably is more difficult (and less efficient) than writing yourself the miniscule parts of those libraries needed for your particular project.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I'd be more interested to see a comparison of a 4 years CS grad with another 4 years of work experience up against someone with 8 years of work experience.
There is (among others) a specific reason that HR departments have come to demand a degree: labor regulations under Fair Labor Standards Act, that set the criteria for exempt vs. non-exempt positions. Regulations have evolved so that a gating criterion for an engineering or technical occupation, to qualify as exempt, is an engineering or science degree.
One division of the regulations provides an exception for computer-related occupations. One reading of this appears to exempt most programmers from the degree requirement, but I have heard of conflicting interpretations (e.g. this exemption is intended to apply to IT work, but not to more engineer-like embedded systems work).
The alternative is the learned professional exemption. The criteria here appear to allow some latitude, but the black letter statement is that a degree in one of the sciences, engineering, theology (!), etc. qualifies a person under this exemption.
As FLSA regulations evolved, a number of companies went through job reclassifications, taking non-degreed exempt engineers to non-exempt technician titles.
I was an embedded systems developer, no degree, for 30+ years. My company shut the division that I worked for. I went back to university for a degree in physics, because I wanted something intellectually disparate from my field of work. I qualify under FLSA, but perhaps an HR department would still discount my degree as not being in CS. That said, I went back into embedded systems immediately after graduating.
As a returned adult student, I had the opportunity to observe the university as well as to attend it. There are several reasons that students are taking closer to 5 years to graduate. First, uneven preparation coming from high school. Second, a more liberal policy toward retaking failed or D-grade courses than existed in in the early 1970s. Third, especially after the economic shock of 2008+, a positive surge in enrollment coinciding with a negative surge in funding. It can be difficult to get a seat in required courses. This can turn a 1-semester wait for a course, into a 3-semester delay in degree progress.
Evidence on preparation gaps: 40% of the seats in my first semester main-sequence freshman chemistry class, went to students who dropped or failed the class. The most frequent deficiency was in basic high school algebra skills. Second might have been too much attention to alcohol and modern high-THC weed. Make that third; I think second was rapt attention to text messaging rather than to the lecture. One aspect of being a returned adult student who is doing the work, is being pulled aside to hear the professors' woes; that is where I got the 40% number.